Stripe  Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas  10.5 x 10.5 inches

Milly la Foret    Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas   9.5 x 15 inches

Cool Kat   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas  13 x 8.5 inches

Rather than writing this artnotes, I should be reviewing old artnotes for their publication as an ebook.  I have been hot on the trail of electronic publishing these days:  for our baseball book,  many children’s books (a compilation of 6 Christmas stories),  a sort of art catalog, as well as artnotes’ books.  To read or watch the process on youtube seems like a monkey could do it, but this chimpette is stymied by the art and pictures.  I seem to have gotten one epub book going with “Summerball” our baseball production: now to market it.  Facebook invitations loom.

Blair has been in the USA all week, and Harika has taken to the bed.  She waits for him at home each day:  I have to drag her away from our building for her immediate needs.   She is not “off her food” however, and I have continued to make her various meat/spinach/rice dishes that she might keep up her strength until Blair returns with “call of the wild” venison kibble.  This dog is not spoiled.  In fact, when people insinuate such at the park,  I make a mental note.

I’ve been getting out a bit with Blair not here.  My very close girlfriend, who moved back to Tunisia, came to visit and we drank tea and ate toast on Tuesday.  I tried to convince her champagne was in order, but 10 AM was just too early. 

Today I went to an American women’s coffee klatch.  It was kind of wonderful – rather exceptional American women  (or married to exceptional men, and  we know who is behind every great man), all together for visiting and pastry.  How can you go wrong?

It was a charming visit from the start.   My friend forgot the digicode to get into the building, and there was another woman there in the same boat.  We three all tried different telephone numbers:  “we’re downstairs what’s the code?  You mean this isn’t D?”  I laughed at our silliness.  Finally another attendee appeared, in control , and we all dashed up to the apartment.

People were surprised I’d been in Paris so long but never attended a coffee with them.  “I was just too fascinated with the French, “ I said, “but this time I am myself.”  When I read back to review my artnotes from 1999, I see just how fascinated I was.  I hung on every nuance, every little difference.  Many of those nuances and differences don’t carry over to the younger generations.  I don’t think anyone is changing the service and glasses between each dinner course anymore.  And NOBODY is offering cigarettes after the meal.    

It was most apparent when my friend H asked if I’d been to the Carrefour (supermarket) yet.  “No,” I confessed, “I am trying to support our little merchants.”  There is nary a butcher  left in my neighborhood  when there used to be two.  Meanwhile, we’ve seen the addition of two “supermarkets” .   I visit Christian of the “Neveux Triperie”  on Tuesdays and Fridays and he cuts meat he knows Blair, Harika and I will like.  In Paris, we all have larger refrigerators than we used to, to accommodate the less frequent shopping.  

I visited with a former French teacher, several women whose husbands were posted here, a Khazakstani trying to find a home for a cat, a Hungarian, a hotel student, and several others.  My favorite was a conversation with a former Texan with a penchant for saving the suffering girls in Afghanistan – it had a certain mother-in-Mary-Poppins- movie feeling, with issues outside being more important than issues within the house.   I found the whole thing amusing, from the outside.

As I explained to the head of the group, “…just today I made a “faux pas” with an invitation to tea – I couldn’t go, but in France there is a certain protocol to follow -- but hey, sooner or later the jig would be up anyway.”   I reached for another cookie.

Early Morning on the Seine    Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas  24 x 15 inches

Lions Gate Louvre   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas  15.5 inches square

Seine September Morn  Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas  16 x 9.5 inches

White Roses from M     Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas 9.5 x 14 inches  SOLD

Under the Passerelle   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas   18 x 15 inches

On th Street: Deux Magots    Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas  21 x 17 inches

A tremendous amount of our time is spent “on the street”.  One reason is for Harika’s needs, but the other is my need to have someplace to paint.  Although I am seeking a studio to use, almost all of my work is completed “en plein air”, wherever that happens to be.

On the way to the Luxembourg Gardens on Friday, I found a two foot tall human skeleton, complete with organs, in a clear plastic snap-shut case.  I am a big fan of bones, and carried it to the gardens and then home (I took out all the innards, and the white skeleton poses in a corner).   We are always finding things, as we dawdle along with our pet, who sniffs each nook and cranny along the two mile morning circuit.

Friday was a particularly nice day, and I packed up my paints and took to the sidewalk.  Headed for the Seine, I only made it as far as the Deux Magots café.  Normally I resist such a “popular” theme, but today the orange/coral/pink tree against the white and thalo green umbrellas was too much to resist.   I pitched my easel.

Although this is one of the busiest corners in town, it was calm on Friday.   There were surprisingly few tourists, almost no Indian newspaper guys; and nary a shopper on St. Germaine – I didn’t see a single gypsy.   My only interruptions were a French woman seeking directions and an Italian looking for the Metro (I was almost standing at the entry).   As I turned, the metro newspaper headline “USA pastor threatens to burn Koran” set me on edge, and I tried to look French.

I wrapped up this rather large canvas in a short time.  Something comes over me when I paint.  All the way back up rue de Rennes the sidewalk still looks purple, the trees shades of pink.  I am one degree removed from life, in a trance-like state the gentleness of Paris allows.  It’s why I can paint here better than many other places.

On Saturday we take Harika on the number 63 bus (in her sac) to the Bois de Boulogne.  It’s our first foray there with her since we’ve been back in January.  She chases a couple of rabbits.  I pursue a painting but the distractions of the Saturday crowd are just too great.  All is not lost:  we walk along the lake and enjoy the ambiance of fall.

 

 

Artnotes:  Bohemian

 

“We’re no fun anymore,” I announce to Blair. Breakfast conversation had dwindled. Harika is the only one who is met with effusive greetings at the Fleurus or Hippocampus, two of our early morning haunts.

“I know how to fix that:  we need to do something interesting every day,” I go on.  “Every other day,” Blair chides.  “Then we’ll have something to talk about.”

We made our first foray last night to Vogue’s Fashion Night 2010, on avenue Montaigne.   With Harika, doing her best to look like an Irish wolfhound, we took the 63 bus to the location.  It was easy to see where the event was taking place.  Pencil thin women dressed in black tottered on frighteningly high heels toward Avenue Montaigne.   I saw a pair of crutches leaning on a fence by the Plaza Athene. 

  

In the windows I saw lots of fur (Harika likes that).   I recall the clothes as being black, grey and various neutrals.  What stood out to me was a woman in a silk dress with full skirt patterned in what I would describe as clowns and flowers.  In fact, not far away was a shop festooned with clown balloons, and a band of performers.  Women in dresses featuring pale neons on silk and a clown motif abounded.  It put me in the mind of the circus or the racetrack, but in fact it was a new boutique on the Avenue Montaigne called  Mahoun.   It was anything but typical, but was riotous fun – models and clothes you could touch and hug and dance in.

Otherwise, fashion night seemed to be a serious affair.   The attendees were dressed,  almost entirely,  IN BLACK.  The only place they allowed themselves to “come out” was in their shoes.   We saw fabulous shoes:  strappy, laquered-looking, metal trims – my personal favorites were what I would describe as a pair of short red-leaning-to-coral boots with bright magenta “spats”.  Otherwise the outfit was black.

Handsome black men in very expensive suits (black or variations on black, of course) stood at the doors – they were very beautiful themselves.  Models of serious height and dramatic visage sported the clothes for sale inside the boutiques.    To me, they were more lovely and impressive than what they wore:  beautiful buffed skin, hair brilliantly coiffed, makeup that seemed to come from an unearthly source.  I would like to paint them, like El Greco figures.

We walked up and down the street in our own bohemian togs.  Crossing the bridge at Alma, Harika breathed a sigh of relief as she rolled in the grass near the entrance to the sewer tour.

We stayed out rather late, walking almost the whole way home.  I cooked pork chops for dinner, with apples, radishes and prunes, inspired by the colors of Mahoun.  Mahoun describes itself as gypsy style with a bohemian soul.  I think that describes Blair and I and Harika perfectly.

Trees in the Luxembourg Gardens   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Acrylic on canvas  approx. 10 x 20 inches

Early Morning Cafe Luxembourg Gardens     Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Arcrylic on linen   15.5 x 15.5 inches

Dahlias    Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on canvas   9.5 x 15.5 inches

Artnotes:  The Time Machine

'

'Was it any surprise my first book out of the library after vacation was “The Time Machine” by H.G.Wells? Blair and I just spent a month in the US visiting our families. There is something about being back in the “old country” that confounds and frustrates. Maybe it is because we are in the process of easing transitions for the old folks: from independent living to something more manageable; from this world to the next. Regardless of how upbeat I tried to be – playing water baseball with my tween nephews – life was difficult.

 

I feel like I made the voyage in the Time Machine itself – I am tired and dusty. The French word “rentree” refers to this time in September when we go back to work and school. More appropriate for me would be the term “re-entry” -- onto the planet.

 

Our trip did have some extremely high points, including playing in the lake with the family. We spent a day in Washington, DC with Whistler’s Nocturnes at the Freer Gallery. The Freer/Sackler is one of my favorite spots: Blair and I share a favorite painting there – Childe Hassam’s “Chinatown -- Portland, Oregon”. We dash through the Sackler tunnel to the Freer to see it. The most beautiful dining room in the world is there: Whistler’s Peacock Room, featured perfectly intact and breathtaking.

 

It’s easy to forget about visiting beautiful places. With the advent of child/user friendly museums, the sophisticated impressions go wanting. In any case, it gives us more room to see things. On Sunday, we’re having dinner with a friend to plan our museum visits this fall.

 

We’ve lots of plans for this “rentree”: I am going to compile my Artnotes into an ebook (or two – I’ve been writing them since 1998); I am painting bigger – several large canvases in the US, and two 16 x 20 inch since our return; Blair presses on with his engineering service sales. A good friend just rented a historic building in Italy which needs a resident artist.

 

When I turn my mind back to the US, I feel agitated: I want to move forward in life. I am armed with the tools of a bygone era, when America was “on top” and there was no such word as “can’t”. The past is never returning, regardless of how many rich Americans want to restore it. I am trading in my heavy old tools for lighter, brighter, more practical devices: an open mind and a hand on the lever of the time machine for the future.

 

 

  

Eat this?    Laurie Fox PESSEMIER    Acrylic on canvas   20 x 16 inches

Dogs in the Park    Laurie Fox PESSEMIER    Acrylic on canvas  20 x 16 inches  SOLD