As I left the Art Gallery I felt more inspired than I had in years. Over the course of my life I’d staged many one-man exhibitions but these were only really possible because they had all been inspired by very powerfully emotive underlying, autobiographical themes and were more about the exorcism of painful memories than the art itself. Since my last exhibition (Journeys End 1995) no other theme had come anywhere near even tempting me to pick up a paintbrush again. Until now. 

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(Detail from Early Days – Boy from Stonehaugh – from Journeys End exhibition 1995. Alan Dixon. My private collection)
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Inspired (at the thought of ‘possibly’ painting a series of positive themed pictures to compliment RockHeart) I almost danced my way up the street towards the Old Town. With my mind in overdrive I’d already decided the works (if I did them) would be acrylic on canvas in my favourite primary colours and include scenes of Catalan Bay, the apes, the back streets, the Med Steps and more. 

In a brief moment of doubt I remembered (apart from it being over twenty years since I’d painted a picture) my hands were now quite arthritic and so I wondered whether I could even hold a paintbrush let alone drive it to create a dozen paintings. Having said that I’m no writer yet have now written 120 posts for RockHeart and so why not?

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Not far past the Art Gallery (on the next parallel road further up the Rock) I came across a Moroccan restaurant called Marrakesh which had been newly commissioned. Although I wasn’t overly mad about Moroccan food Carol certainly was; she’d hoped to revisit Tangiers during our holiday but that wasn’t possible because of time restraints and so I knew she would love to have a meal out there. Since we were eating out at Queensway Quay this evening I figured she would enjoy to go there tomorrow night and so I photographed the place and the menu before moving on.

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One of the amazing things about Gibraltar today, I’ve found, is that even when you are walking amongst the old there is also often something very new to see; after leaving the Marrakech I’d expected to continue on into the narrower streets of the Old Town but ended up in another quite newly developed spacious seating area that seemed to fit in with its older surroundings. Later in the week when I revisited the area it was lovely to see it all lit up with electric lights.

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Continuing on my walkabout some of the streets, although incredibly quiet, could have come straight out of London City Centre they were so Georgian and pristine; some of them looked as though they housed the offices of solicitors, accountants and the like, maybe they did, and so it was quite refreshing to come across the Gibraltar Senior Citizens Social Club. What was even more refreshing was the notice on the outside welcoming visiting senior citizens though sadly the club was shut otherwise I’d love to have become an ‘Honorary Visiting Wrinkly’. If any members are reading please do add my name to your members register and I’ll call in and sign it as soon as I return. Thank you 🙂

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