Sunday, September 28, 2014

Artnotes: Extreme Amusement

 Blair's Prize Winning  City Park Trees 16 x 16"  40 x 40 cm
Waterlilies in Rain  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/linen  10.5 x 16"  27 x 41 cm
Lilypads after the rain   Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/linen  10.5 x 16"  27 x 41 cm
 After the rain Lily Pond  Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/linen  18 x 22 cm  47 x 54"
 Lily Pond in the Rain  Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/panel  10.5 x 16"  27 x 41 cm
 Carousel with Grandparents Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/linen  13 x 22"   33 x 54 cm
Carousel Friday   Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/linen 10.5 x 16"  27 x 41 cm
 Couples   Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/linen  10.5 x 14  27 x 36 cm
 Boy on a Carousel   Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/linen  14 x 10.5 "  36 x 27 cm
White Elephant  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/linen  16 x 10.5  41 x 27 cm



 Artnotes:  Extreme Amusement
 

A week of extremes:  Blair returned to Paris after taking second prize in the Piedmont Paint Out.  Hip Hip Hooray.   My website disappeared from view on Monday because the “webmaster” didn’t renew my domain name and she is nowhere to be found.  I immediately found the hosting source, paid them 75.00 to get me back on line, and am learning how to make a “form” and am reconstructing the site myself.

We went to Giverny on Wednesday (how could Blair snap back so soon?) and enjoyed the flowers in the sunshine.  When we were about to paint, the sky became cloudy and we were drenched in a downpour.  “Don’t worry,” I told our painter from Hong Kong, “this will all work out”.  Miraculously, it did.  We didn’t feel the damp freezing cold until 8 PM, as we hopped into the car for home.

We had a group of three painters on Friday afternoon, to paint the carousel in the Luxembourg Gardens.  Although it seems like it would be a fun and easy painting, it is very difficult:  round, three lines of ponies and other animals, six deep if you count the other side.  Plus it is moving.   A fourth painter, our same Giverny veteran, painted nearby, and a Russian couple passing by bought her painting.  Bravo for her.

On Saturday, the Paris Painting Workshop was the featured event at a birthday party, once more at the carousel.  Blair roughed in a carousel animal on each of the seven same-size canvases, and the seven ladies painted them.  It was great fun, kids and adults in the park found us  nearly as amusing as the carousel ride itself.  Blair and I painted more carousel pictures.

Amidst all this, Blair has three commissions, and I have two – he’s painting and I am writing to you.  The dog-in-a-convertible painting must wait.

Even though we have a terrific time painting with others, it is an exhausting business.  When I was a child, the two things I didn’t want to be were:  a nun, for obvious reasons, and a teacher – because I am so “present” whenever I am with people, I can never shut off my “machine”.  Harika is the exception – I can relax with her.  It is why I like be an artist:  there is nobody else to be “on” for, except my muse, who entertains me, and I “amuse” her, to the fullest.





 

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