Painting the pines

STANDING ON THE HIGH POINT OF AN ALGARVE SAND DUNE YOU MAY HAVE SEEN THE DELICATE FIGURE OF SPANISH ARTIST, MARIA GARCIA-OREA. HER PAINTING CANVAS, MOUNTED ON AN EASEL, PICTURES THE BEAUTY OF THE SEASHORE FRAMED BETWEEN THE BRANCHES OF WIND-BENT PINES

Words: CAROLYN KAIN

THE pine forests that grow so successfully along the Algarve coastline were deliberately planted to hold back the advance of sand threatening to encroach on villages and agricultural fields. This vast campaign took place across Portugal between the end of the 18th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Today it amounts to one million hectares of pine forest.

Closest to the sea the trees are mostly Stone or Umbrella pines (Pinus pinea), with bark that is deeply fissured and young twigs that are grayish white. Remarkably, they are able to cope with the most arid of conditions. Despite the lack of rain and nutritious soil, they produce pairs of dark green needles and shiny brown cones containing edible pine kernels (pignons).

Composing her paintings carefully, Maria Garcia-Orea shows how the pine trees are contorted by the constant force of the wind blowing off the sea.

Further away from the sea the forest consists mostly of Maritime pines (Pinus pinaster) with long bare trunks and open spreading crowns. Their role is to conserve the soil and at the same time to produce a distinctive smell of pine. All varieties of pine trees produce molecules of pinene with a piney odour and limonene that smell of citrus. Together with other chemicals known as terpenes, they are released into the atmosphere on hot summer days resulting in almost invisible clouds that impede sunlight and help to cool the forest.

Pine trees have other incredible powers of self-protection. If they are damaged, resin from inside the trunk leaks out and hardens. Simultaneously, the smell of terpenes increases and this deters bark beetles and fungi.

Unfortunately, the scent of pine does not discourage processionary caterpillars that like to nest in pine trees. They are a hazard that Maria sometimes has to deal with.

She is a landscape artist who has a special relationship with trees, often using the curved shapes of their trunks and branches to form a natural border to her paintings. Wherever she travels the trees provide different inspirations.

At nine years of age, already certain of the career she wanted to follow, she began attending painting classes in her hometown of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. In 1989 she was old enough to move to Palma de Majorca and to attend the Escuela del Mediterráneo where she still continues with post graduate studies and has set up her own studio.

Her paintings are currently on display at Galeria Côrte-Real on the outskirts of the protected village of Paderne. The short journey from the EN125 to Paderne follows a route through some charming Algarvean countryside.

This is all about favourites. What time of day is your favourite to work?

When I paint in my studio, I can do it at any time of the day. But when I paint outside, I always do it in the early morning – at dawn – because of the colours, light and transparencies.

What is your favourite colour?

I really don’t have a favourite colour. For me, they are all pure magic, and I choose them according to how I feel and what I am painting.

Your favourite music to have as a background when you paint?

I like opera very much, but my favourite while I am working are the Chopin nocturnes.

Your favourite artist?

I have several, but I would choose Velasquez, Da Vinci and Sorolla.

Your favourite time of the year? Spring, without question.

Your favourite film?

Immortal Beloved, the life of Beethoven, really touched me.