On No Account Ride Donkeys: An Artists Greek Odyssey

By Ada Clark

In On No Account Ride Donkeys, Ada Clark takes the reader with her on painting trips to the Greek Islands.

She recalls encounters with a Greek shepherd, negotiating heavy painting gear up the steep steps of Greek ferries, and other fascinating adventures.

Her stories give an insight into how the pictures in this book are created.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Apr 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543408218

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Ada Clark. 774710

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 04/23/2018

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.xlibris.com.au

CONTENTS

Introduction

Hydra

Samos

Paros

Patmos

Mytilini

Kastellorizo

I

dedicate this book to Clifford Abbott

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Ada Clark has lived by her art most of her life. She is a landscape and portrait painter. Ada has designed for industry and has been an interior decorator and fashion designer.

For the last 21 years she has sold her paintings and pottery from her gallery in Millthorpe NSW.

She was married to Australian composer Clifford Abbott till his death in 1994.

She has set up her easel in Uzbekistan, Botswana, Morocco, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, France and of course her favourite country Greece.

She has had 27 one woman exhibitions mainly in Australia opened by ambassadors of the countries she has painted. She likes to express her love of colour and joy of living.

Introduction

Before my first trip to Greece I fell down a flight of icy stairs and damaged my back.

After four months recovery I set off.

On arriving in Greece I went to the embassy to register in case of revolution and an embassy official said we have a strange cable from your husband! It read, On no account ride donkeys. He imagined me trotting along some cobbled path balancing my painting gear on the back of a donkey!

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THE RED CHURCH- HYDRA

ISLE OF HYDRA

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As a young girl, I propped myself up on my bed and looked out of the window at the moon. My imagination took flight.

There must be other worlds besides this I thought and the urge to travel took hold. In my late teens, I had hitch-hiked around Europe with my sister while studying art in London. Marriage and a family and many years later, I was to begin travelling again.

I was working as a publicity officer for a theatre company having undertaken some rather successful promotions for the company such as sitting on the Sydney Morning Herald editor’s desk and refusing to move until he had agreed to write an article on the Q Theatre in the west, as I argued many of their readers lived in that area. I also scored a segment of one of the theatre’s plays on television. I was due annual holidays for three weeks and the director gave me an extra week for doing such a good job. During the past year I had been itching to get back to my art. Four whole weeks! What a thrill, but where to go? I was always interested in Spain as I had a Spanish Great-grandmother but one of the theatre actresses had been mugged on a Basque train so I decided Spain was not a safe place for me to go. I had not been overseas since I was nineteen so I was rather anxious but Byzantine art had always attracted