A dream of mine is to be able to experience the world and work on my art at the same time. The last month I have spent in Greece for most of the time, and about two weeks on the road in a van heading back north. 

I feel so lucky that I had the opportunity to do this, partly for the amazing experience but also getting a feel for what to consider when working on my art outside of my comfortable studio. Luckily, during this trip I've been able to move my studio to some of the best places I have worked in. In the mountains, by the sea, outside of my temporary apartment in the sun with an amazing view over the village.

I've also learned that having a plan is important. At least for me, I know that I need to have some sort of goal before hitting the road, in order to stay focused. This time, my goal was to finish some art pieces for a group exhibition in Mijas, Málaga, that I will take part of at the end of this month. 

I came across some challenges while being in Leonídio. The first one: I worked on different pieces for too long not being sure which ones I wanted to participate with, so once I set my mind to two specific paintings, suddenly I did not have a lot of time to finish them before having to ship them off to Spain. Second challenge: I decided to extend my trip which came with the consequences that I wouldn't make it home in time to ship them from home and know for sure they would make it to the gallery in time. Leading to the next set of challenges: Framing, packing and shipping from Leonídio. Where would I find frames in this unusual format? How do I pack them properly? Will it be possible to ship it from a different country and trust that it will work out without issues? How will I figure this out with very few people speaking English? 

Turns out, that down the road from my apartment was a wood working shop. Luckily the friendly man in there spoke some German, as did my friend who could explain my situation. About an hour later I had two built frames in the perfect format. He even let me borrow his staple gun to stretch my paintings.

Next step: Packing. I went by all thinkable stores that could have leftover pieces of bubble wrap, which apparently was an impossible mission to complete. Eventually I managed to buy by the meter from a very messy store with a friendly Greek old man and his English speaking son. I also swung by the post office to make sure they could ship to Spain, as well as getting a perfectly shaped box they used for some storage to pack my paintings. Paintings could be packed!

New problem the day after, in Leonídio Easter is a very big holiday, meaning that the last couple of days I would actually be in the village - the post office would be closed. A simple solution for this was to just bring the carefully packed box with us in the space-lacking van we would be calling home for the upcoming couple of weeks. A few days later I proudly shipped my package from Meteora, Kalambaka. This all thought me that it is possible to handle challenges even out on the road!