Artnotes: Bobbing with the Boats

Cassis Harbor  Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  11 x 16

Cagnes en Haut   Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  13 x 16 inches

Trees Mount Boron   Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas 13 x 16

Trees Cassis  Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  11 x 16

Olive Tree (darker in real life)  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas 9 x 11

Oliviers   Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas  16 x 24 inches

View at Cassis   Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  11 x 16

Downtown Cassis  Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  11 x 16

View from Renoir's Garden  Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  27 x 36

Olive Tree in Menton   Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/canvas  12 x 12 inches

Fishing with a String    Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas11 x 9 inches

Mediterranean Fisherman  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas  12 x 12 inches

We painted in Cassis on Wednesday with a friend from Paris.  It was another “white cloud” day.  We sat at the end of the dock, committing downtown Cassis and the harbor to canvas.  We’d hoped to take the “Calanques” tour, but the boat wasn’t running.  Harika was running on the beach, got 86’d by the guard; we went to the market and bought two pieces of fatty ham we ate by the side of the boules court.  A cat prowled the docks while we painted, testing Harika’s patience.

Nobody’s perfect.  I have had a difficult time on this trip, and have been a pain to be with.  I read about people in the newspaper, who make mistakes (Obama, Hollande, Amiri Baracka, Scarlett Johannsen) and think, wait, I am making mistakes all the time.  In realizing such, I learn, and hopefully they do, too.  Many things really don’t matter so much.   It’s only people who DO things who make mistakes; the inactive are immune.

In our rental car we went to Italy on Friday.  There were fisherman by the sea at Cervo, the medieval town we almost stayed in (we would have had we not paid for our apartment in Villefranche already).  There were rocky outcroppings and sandy beach, a la La Marsa, Tunisia, where Harika came from.  

Italy is so very different from France.  I felt wonderful when we got out of the car there – I smiled in a way that made my whole face feel good (could have been that I was grimacing all along the 1000 foot high curving mountain roads).  I felt so happy and relaxed I could have cried.   

 We ate a a place called Macaroni’s.  Why does spaghetti taste so much better in Italy?   Thank goodness it does.   Blair and I talked of the possibility of living in Italy, although I am not sure – it is an even more men/women kind of place than France, and I’ve never been able to line up on the right side.   The fishermen by the sea are nearly all men:  at least a dozen boys and one blond haired girl.  Good for her.

This has been a rather painful trip – I’ve had a headache off and on since Christmas day;  I keep the pharmacy in business buying aspirin and antihistamines.  It is my sinuses:   a Seattle headache, where we were plagued with overcast skies and constant humidity, like here.    Blair and I used to wear hats to bed then, knitted caps made by his mother.

Every morning we walk down to the beach near our house.  Blair scavenges for junk and Harika and I lie about  – once in a while we run around and today I got wet up to my thighs – others  swim, but it’s just too cold for me.  Today Blair found a French SOUS from 1943.  

We retire to the Joyeuse Baleine  where they make a  delicious cappuccino, and we sit and sip outdoors, bobbing with the boats in the basin.