El Molar

El Molar sits on a hill in the Priorat, in the south of Catalonia, a village of a few hundred people where the road climbs out of the vines and the church tower is the first thing you see and the last thing you lose. For a long time the hills here were dug for lead and silver; the mines closed, the terraces stayed, and the wine took over. It is quiet in the way only working villages are quiet.

I drew it from the bottom of the street, looking up, the way you arrive. The tower leans a little because I was leaning a little. This year the village is one of the homes of the Priorat film and wine festival, and this piece is the first of a set: one drawing for each of the villages the festival passes through.

It is drawn in Japanese sumi ink, the kind that dries to a soft black, and then washed with wine from the vineyards around the village itself, reduced on the studio stove until it held its colour on the paper. Nothing else. The warm tones in the stone are the wine.

Cain is from Manchester and lives and works in Castellón, on the Spanish coast. He draws in ink and whatever else the place offers: tea, coffee, wine. His work sits in two territories, close botanical studies and the buildings he finds in the places he visits, and his constant companion is Lordy, a pug.