A Summer Evening at Art Studio Portals

Despite the summer heat, many of our members joined us for an inspiring evening at Art Studio Portals, where gallery owner and artist Claudia Vanessa Fallis was showing her work alongside three fellow artists, Krystyna, Katell Besnard and Octavia Campbell-Davys.

And of course, Freya, the dog, deserves a special mention for being such a charming host and doing her bit to make us all feel very welcome.

What connects the four artists is their chosen home of Mallorca, but also their international backgrounds and biographies shaped by change, movement and relocation. Each has found her own way of responding to the island and to the experience of making a home somewhere new.

For Claudia, this experience is reflected in her current series of collages. Inspired by the grand but often renovation-needy houses in which she has lived on the island, she uses fragments of the layers and layers of wallpaper uncovered during their renovation. These discarded pieces are given a new life, carefully assembled into affectionate and evocative reminiscences of Mallorca’s past.

Krystyna creates delicate, timeless pencil drawings of the vegetation found along the wayside. Her works are deliberately unframed. After moving from country to country so many times, she sees the bulk and weight of frames as unnecessary baggage. Instead, her drawings retain an intimate, almost immediate quality.

Katell Besnard, originally from Brittany, travels with her watercolour box, brushes and diary, capturing the small scenes of everyday life in her adopted home with an observant eye and poetic touch. A sardine, a hoopoe or a donkey; vegetables at the market or a weathered stone façade — her subjects range from the picturesque to the entirely ordinary. They may sometimes look like postcard scenes, but they are much more than that: they are personal observations of life on the island.

Octavia Campbell-Davys, having overcome significant health challenges, turns her attention outward after a period of inner exploration. Her paintings reveal the contrasts and tensions of everyday Mallorca: traditional llaüt boats alongside bright yellow inflatable ducks; hotel façades beside a solitary swimmer seeking stillness in a pool; three boats from three different eras, powered by oars, sails and engines. Alongside these juxtapositions are coastal and mountain landscapes, their colours brought vividly to life by the island’s unmistakable light.

Together, the four artists offer very different perspectives on Mallorca — its landscape, history, everyday life and contradictions — while sharing a distinctly international outlook. Well worth seeing.

Over tapas and wine, we also discovered that Art Studio Portals offers painting classes on Fridays and Saturdays, taught by Katell. For anyone who would like to try their hand at painting, no previous experience is required. Materials can be borrowed, and you can take your finished artwork home with you.

It was a wonderful evening and an opportunity for many good conversations along the way. We thank Claudia and the artists for their warm hospitality and for sharing their work and inspiration with us.

Photos by Ulla Rahn-Huber