Almond blossoms Blair Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 15 x 15" 40 x 40 cm sold
Blossoms in March Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 15" 30 x 40 cm
Snow in the Trees Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 12 x 15" 30 x 40 cm
Violets growing in the Rock Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 10 x 14" 25 x 35cm
Through the Chapel Window Blair Pessemier Acrylic/panel 12 x 12" 30 x 30cm
Winter and Spring Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 9 x 12" 24 x30 cm
Artnotes: if you don’t
like the weather…
My father always jokes, a la Mark Twain, “if you don’t like
the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” This is soon to be the global mantra.
The week began with heavy fog, which cleared up by Wednesday
morning, for Blair and I to paint the
almond blossoms and to lunch outside.
Not far from our house, we could see the Alps, 200 miles away. That
afternoon Blair bought two black cypress trees at the garden store (Ludovico,
the gardener said, “ I’ll plant them next week.”) and I planted primrose and
violets. On Thursday morning we woke up to 4 inches of
snow, which continued most of the day.
The eight or so inches froze, then we got the strongest winds I have ever experienced, Friday evening
through Saturday afternoon (Otto at the café assures me this is not normal). Trees toppled, and the lids flew off our 4
foot tall terra cotta planters. What
happened to sunny Italy?
Friends from Corsica visited us on their way to Slovenia,
and then on their way back. The
daughter had been making documentary movies in Slovenia for fourteen months,
and worked in a refugee center. She is
the only person I know who has actually experienced the “refugee situation”,
and it was surprising. Competing NGOs
and encouraging immigration were just part of it. “Don’t believe the television”, was her
advice. As time goes on, I think the
media is constructing our reality, from world conflicts to politics, and I am
careful what I read. Right now I am
reading “Nabokov’s Butterflies”.
They brought us dozens of bottles of Bordeaux and cheeses
from France. I don’t mean to complain,
but I have had difficulty with Italian wines.
I can taste the heat in the wine, and it makes it hard for me to notice
anything else. Italian wine and
duck? I don’t know. Of course there is the Barolo, at near 20 a
bottle, “the king of wines”. G, from
Iceland, brought us slippers that her mother knitted, and Corsican
sausages. We had feasts and lots of
laughs together.
We took the Corsicans (Corsica is that blend of Italian and
French – what could be better?) to our
favorite pasta joint in Modena:
Aldini. It’s an upstairs
restaurant, and fashionable diners eat delicious homemade food. We get the combination of three pastas – if
you are going to gorge pasta, may as well go all the way. Tortellini in brodo; Tortelli with ricotta
and spinach, Modenese style; we slipped in a Risotto, and finished with my
favorite Lasagna. Waddle waddle down
the stairs and out. We drank Sangiovese
all around – a rather thin wine.
We took a walk through the woods that afternoon, eyeing the
incredible amount of violets in bloom.
Today, the bird sings outside our window to put a good face
on things. Bravissimo!
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