Collioure Kids at the Beach   Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic on canvas 10 x 14 inches

 Collioure Skipping Rocks  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic on canvas  9 x 13 inches  SOLD

 Collioure:  On the rocks   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Acrylic on panel  7.5 x 12 inches 

 Collioure:  boulevard   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Acrylic on canvas  10x 14 inches

 Collioure:  Trees in Shadow  Blair PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  10.5 x 16 inches

 Collioure:  3 men   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Acrylic on panel  10 x 12 inches 

Collioure:  Chateau and reflections   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Acrylic on canvas  13 x 9 inches 

Collioure Houses  Blair PESSEMIER   Oil on linen 20 x 20 inches 

Collioure:  Night View   Blair PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  15 x 21.5 inches 

 View from Red Fish   Blair PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  15 x 19 inches   SOLD

 House on the rocks  Laurie FOX Pessemier  Acrylic on canvas 9 x 13 inches

 Lighthouse Port Vendres  Laurie FOX Pessemier  Acrylic on canvas  7.5 x 13 inches SOLD

 Sacrament   Laurie FOX Pessemier  Acrylic on canvas  10.5 x 9 inches 

 Lady of Lourdes  Laurie FOX Pessemier   Acrylic on canvas  9.5 x 6.5 inches 

Boat and Church Port Vendres  Laurie FOX Pessemier  Acrylic on canvas  9 x 14 

Boat Basin Port Vendres  Blair PESSEMIER  Acrylic on canvas 9 x 11 inches

 Collioure:  fall vines with leaves    Laurie FOX Pessemier   Acrylic on linen  11 x 16 inches

 Collioure:  Beach with palms   Blair PESSEMIER   Oil on linen  15x 21.5 inches

Collioure: Little scene from the window  Blair PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  9 x 6 inches  SOLD

 Collioure:  Oranges  Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on linen  9.5 x 12 inches 

 Collioure:  Houses by the beach   Laurie Fox PESSEMIER   Acrylic on linen  11 x 16 inches SOLD

Collioure:  vines by the side of the road    Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Acrylic on canvas  14 x 11 inches 

Collioure:  vines   Blair PESSEMIER   Oil on linen  16 x 11 inches

 Collioure:  Sunny Monday   Blair PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  10.5 x 16 inches   SOLD

 Collioure:  Market   Blair PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  10.5 x 16 inches 

 Collioure: Donkeys  Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  10.5 x 16 inches 

ARTNOTES:  Donkey News

It took almost nine hours, in our rental car (a Peugot 508SW that had just 5 kilometers on the odometer) to arrive at our holiday destination. Blair and I and Harika are spending Christmas and New Years in Collioure, a small (former) fishing village on the Mediterranean, very close to the coast of Spain.

This trip is, of course, a painting vacation – it is fifteen degrees warmer here, and we’ve actually seen the sun for some of the hours we’ve been here. This morning we went to the market, where Blair painted a terrific scene.

Our house is large enough we can have a studio room, as well as our bedroom, large kitchen with table, and living/dining room. The only drawback is its terrazzo floors, so we brought carpets from Paris to keep our tootsies (and Harika’s) warm.

For more than 50 years I spent every Christmas in my birthplace of Winsted, Connecticut with my family. The last 30 Christmases Blair spent there, too, with a visit to Virginia to visit his Mom, too. Now that my mother has passed away, my father doesn’t feel like celebrating and my sisters both have their own families (Blair’s mother died this year, too) . So it is up to Blair and I and Harika to forge a new tradition.

As soon as we got here I saw the advertisement for a Christmas fair. We settled into our house, got Harika situated, and walked downtown to check out the festivities.

We should have been hip to the magnitude of the production: we saw donkeys, in hats, carrying children around the town. We climbed the old Catalan/Moorish fort on the bay, and behold: there were camels, donkeys, sheep and geese (the latter two under the supervision of a farm dog). Hark, there were angels “on high”, or at least on stilts, casting snowflakes and golden glitter on the crowd. Wise and strong men lifted children onto the backs of the camels, bedecked in jewels, for spin around the interior courtyard of the 13^th century stone structure. The scene was, in fact, how it might have taken place seven or eight hundred years ago. Tears of joy and wonder filled my eyes as I sipped hot wine.

Christmas music played, and patterned light fell against the stones. We walked along the ramparts and watched the moon rise on the water. Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything finer or a better way to hail in the holiday season.

Our landlady set up a little electric (fiber optic) Christmas tree for us, and Blair is sending out cards. I brought my collection of Motown Christmas music. Maybe we’ll get a wreath for the rental car.

I have no wifi here, and there isn’t a starbucks or mcdo’s for miles around, so my electronic communication may be spotty. I have hopes for the library.

Collioure’s population is only 2,763 people. Maybe 10% of them were present on Saturday night; plus people from neighboring towns. I thought, why don’t more places do this? If I were king, or just a city mayor, I certainly would.

  Collioure: Footbridge  Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  10.5 x 16 inches SOLD

Collioure: Boat  Laurie Fox PESSEMIER  Oil on linen  5 x 10 inches

 Luxembourg Gardens:  Pan     M. Blair PESSEMIER    Oil on canvas  18 x 21  $450.00

 Thanksgiving trees    Laurie FOX Pessemier   Acrylic on canvas  12 x 12 inches 

Artnotes:  Home for the Holiday

Artnotes and painting fell by the wayside as I flew to Connecticut for the holiday.  It’s our first Thanksgiving without my Mom, and everyone was a little blue – so Blair found me a very cheap flight to Connecticut, where I was able to spread a little holiday cheer.

It was perhaps the worst flight of my life – on the new airbus 380.  Once nestled in seat 49F, on the ground floor, I tucked my arms into the seatbelt to keep them from flopping onto my neighbors.  King Kong, seated to my left, was not as thoughtful.  A matchstick girl on my right, who had been en route for more than 40 hours from Kilamanjaro airport, was friendlier – bumping into one another was ok, actually a comfort among the 582 passengers on board, 10 across.

The air was so thin, there was a request for “a doctor” as another passenger seemed to be having a heart attack.  I had difficulty breathing, and when the panic set in I realized we were pitifully deprived of oxygen.  Moments after the medical call, puffs of O2 burst forth from the air handling system and I could once again think clearly.   The lady beside me told me how she loved Africa – she’d been there as a volunteer in Tanzinia.  “I spent 8 hours sleeping on the floor of the airport in Sudan due to a delay – no lights, no services,” she told me, “and then to arrive in Paris to buy a 10 euro sandwich was such a contrast!”

It took 30 minutes to get the plane docked after landing (we needed a special tractor to bring us to the gate), and another half hour to get us all off.   “Welcome home,” the passport agent greeted me.

I hopped on the Connecticut Limo with ease.  It was already full, and I had to squeeze in next to a slightly smelly man with an Eastern European accent.  A French guy from my flight perched on the edge of the seat next to me.

We stopped at another terminal for one more.  A large, long-haired fellow up front threatened to “drop” the driver, speaking loudly into his cell phone, if we didn’t get underway at once.  The girl next to him seemed embarrassed.  The Indian we picked up had six suitcases.  There were groans of outrage in the van.  The French guy and I visited about how we liked New York at Christmas.  “Where are you getting off?” he asked.

The Frenchman moved back to the widest row, to the dismay of the very round couple, dressed in fur with piggy eyes, ensconced there,.  The Indian then sat beside me.   All the way home, the Eastern European was poking me in the ribs – “we’re driving too fast”, he’d hiss.    I wished for a seatbelt.

While the driver was arranging the six bags in the rear of the car, a radio reporter interviewed a woman at a New Jersey turnpike rest stop.  “Yes,” she said enthusiastically, “we’ve got four adults and a chihauhua in this car.  But I kind of like it, lots of conversation.” 

“Like us,” I told our group, “it’s what the holidays are all about”.   You could have heard a pin drop.

The Frenchman and the “tough” longhair debarked in Greenwich.  My smelly seatmate got off in Shelton.  I wished the round woman in her fur coat a Happy Thanksgiving as her husband chided her “don’t fall” as she stumbled out of the car in Middlebury.  “We’ll be alright now,” she told me, “now that we are almost home.”

Luxembourg Gardens Boules November   Blair PESSEMIER   Oil on canvas  9.5 x 12 inches  $450.00