For three months in late 2022, I was hosted by the Buinho Creative Hub in the village of Messejana, in the south of Portugal. My first artist residency and my first experience living in the countryside coincided to bring about a productive period of quiet self-reflection and patient search for visual stimulation in my unfamiliar surroundings. I have always thought of creativity as universal, innate to all of us no matter our age, locality, or way of life, and all of its traces and the serendipitous discoveries of objects and materials that this tiny village had to offer in abundance only further confirmed this for me. Regardless of its materializations, the creative process is accessible to anyone; it is within us to be able to see the world anew each waking morning, even at times and in places where life seems to be standing still. We could choose to look at something from a different angle, close in on a detail, or let our gaze travel far into the landscape... We could even pretend that what we wish for is true to our eyes, wouldn't that be enough?

Do bright colors change in the light of a grey, rainy day?
Does a line of green emerge where blue and yellow meet?
What shade of blue is Alentejo blue?
Is that fog climbing up the hills? Are the clouds laying low over the fields? Or is it the sea approaching from the distance?
It's enough to imagine—to imagine is to experience.

The works from the series Permanent/impermanent, Fixed in place, Alentejo blues, Object additions, Fake flowers, and the project Enough to imagine were all conceived during this residency.