Paintings by Blair + Laurie Fox PESSEMIER: Beach Poetry

Digging in the sand Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic on wood 7 x 10.5 inches

ARTNOTES: Beach Poetry

“Live music -- making music is the magic; recording music is something else,” announced our dinner companion last weekend. Amazing, those conversations over pasta, at the Golfe de Naples, near the Marche St Germain.

So it goes for music, and for art. It’s not the touching up and framing and the gallery; it’s the painting that moves from eye to hand to canvas. It’s the process, the performance – I guess that is what artists from the 60s were trying to say. And here we are, making paintings, lots of them, since Tuesday, in Villefranche-sur-Mer, without a thought to anything else.

As the train turned the corner at Marseille, I felt my worries drop into the Mediterranean. I could imagine smiling, for one thing. It’s not easy to smile in Paris, in the winter at least. Other people think you are crazy.

The change from Paris to this little town on the French Riviera, is remarkable: no sirens. In fact, there are no cars in our part of town. If it weren’t for the church bells, there wouldn’t be any interruptions at all. I strongly dislike church bells, but fortunately they don’t ring between 9 PM and 7 AM. That constitutes 63 interruptions a day, between the numerous churches and hour/half hour configurations. And I can’t hear the bell on the waterfront. By comparison, the 5-times-a-day muezzin’s call (although there isn’t one here) seem like small potatoes.

When I wake up in the morning I feel relaxed. In Paris, there were men outside my window tinking on the zingerie at 8 AM. I had to keep my draperies closed. Here, women bask in the sun without shirts. Blair, Harika and I have been sitting on the beach these sunny afternoons. Harika bares all.

We are in a divine apartment, in a building constructed in 1559. We take Harika down the stairs without a leash, and we meander through the little streets of Villefranche-sur-Mer. There’s a poetry, not filtered, to our days here.