Illeta

• Mixed medium
• An original
• Framed
• 115 x 95cms

Illeta is my first love. This is really where the painting journey restarted for me again.

We travelled to Mallorca to a place called Camp de Mar when we were completing a house renovation.  At the time we were living in a very, very small building, my old office in fact, and we had no space. During the July holidays when the builders weren't in our current home, I came into our building site of a home and decided to paint. I needed something to calm my mind….something to take me away from the endless ‘to do’ lists and the pressure of a home extension. 

And when I thought back to where I had visited recently, one of the most beautiful places was at this restaurant, Illeta, in Camp de Mar. This restaurant has actually been in a few movies and in a Netflix documentary called White Lines, where it was depicted as being in Ibiza, but it's definitely in Camp de Mar, a beautiful cove in southern Mallorca. 

It was so good, we've been twice. You have to book weeks, if not months in advance. I've been during the day and also at night. This was during the day on our first visit. It is simply a stunningly beautiful place - a restaurant on a small island that you travel to on foot via a boardwalk. 

I was sitting there with my husband, looking out, thinking how grateful I was to be in this beautiful part of the world and in this gorgeous restaurant. Fast forward to the July holidays back in County Down, beside my building site, and I wanted to transport myself back to Illeta. The paint used in Illeta is actually Johnston's household paint. It is the tester pots for our new home…that’s all I had, and a blank canvas, and it was more than enough to get me going. 

I thought, I'm going to use these and see what I can create….and so Illeta started to take shape. 

I love the freedom of painting…but I hadn’t painted in some years. What really surprised me was the peace I felt when I painted. I didn't know if this piece was going to turn out okay, but that was fine too as I was so enjoying the process. It took quite a few days to get to a point where I was happy with it, and even when I had finished the main painting, I sat with it and added additional texture. 

It's the kind of painting for me that you stand back on a busy day or whenever you have a lot going on in your mind,  you can just picture yourself sitting in the middle of the ocean in a beautiful restaurant, having a dinner with someone you love, and feeling quite at peace. I love Illeta. I really hope you do too.

Illeta …for the originals.