531 - Gym Halama (Painter/Adventurer)

I met Gym when I rented her place on Airbnb in Chite, Spain. Just looking at the photos of the funky space she’d created, I had a sense that this woman would be fascinating, and my hunch turned out to be 110% on target. As it happens, Gym is an accomplished painter, has worked on many TV and film sets, and has published a book of autobiographical stories and reproductions of selected paintings called Zigzag: Flashbacks of a Painter (which I loved — available from Gym directly, if you want a copy).

We talk about the strange, wonderful, sometimes difficult path Gym has taken to her current life, where she spends her days painting in her beautiful studio in southern Spain. It’s a path that’s passed through Keith Richards’ greenhouse, sleeping in stranger’s unlocked cars in Italy, pretending to be a top model in Paris, and a thousand other adventures.

Intro music “Brightside of the Sun,” by Basin and Range. “Give it All Away,” Aron Attwood; Outro: “Smoke Alarm,” by Carsie Blanton.

A little something just for subscribers:

Mother above, Gym on left, her daughter on the right.