Paintings by Blair + Laurie Fox PESSEMIER: Artnotes: No Ghosts

26 March 2022 Stimigliano, RI Italia

My Muse from rue de Lille, 14 July Laurie Fox Pessemier 6 x 20" 15 x 50cm Acrylic/wood 550.00

Men have been rebuilding our sewers in Stimigliano this week. What did they think would happen when five hundred years of street construction was jackhammered into oblivion? Broken pipes. It is way beyond medieval… it is downright caveman. And the work group resembles a band of marauders, scarves and earrings, and a one pulse language barely understandable, an unknown dialect associated with kidnapping. I cover my ears. They are holed up at the local B and B and we see them day and night, while walking Berlino. He gives them a wide berth.

Lithos. Are you my muse? is he? Laurie Fox Pessemier 5 x 7" 12.5 x 17.5cm 85.00

We wouldn’t be here at all for this, except that we took advantage of the broken sidewalk to reinstitute the electrical wire to my studio (cut by our neighbor), which is taking way longer to repair than planned. I had imagined just attaching a new wire from our house to the cantina, but there are piles of ancient rocks in the corners of my atelier, where paintings used to be. Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this? I ask Blair. I didn’t know. HA.

Butterfly by a Paris Muse Laure Fox Pessemier Acrylic/wood 6 x 9" 15 x 22cm sold

My muse has fled. I know you probably think that is hocus-pocus, but wherever I have lived and been productive, there was a place for my muse. It’s a ghost-y kind of occupant, who makes the art through my own head and hand. In our apartment on rue de Lille, in Paris, she resided in a corner of the apartment, where I came up with my first Artnotes (1998), and I painted and wrote and broke into the realm of being an artist. I could feel her occupy a place, near my head, and off we’d go.

My First Italian Muse paints Venice Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 6 x 10" 15 x 25cm 550.00

I found another muse in that building, in a studio we rented from friends. The room held my giant butterfly collection and I painted large canvases of butterflies and insects there. A third muse shared my hand at rue d’Assas in the early 2000s. My muse was more mobile at rue de Rennes, and would hop into my caddie as I pulled my supplies to the park.

Finding a muse in Italy has been more difficult. It is a brutish, masculine country, and a muse has a hard time settling. But I found one in my studio here. He pushed me into the mediums of terra cotta, and then the beloved lithography.

Berlino at Vescovio Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/canvas 14 x 11" 35 x 27cm 450.00

I would go into the studio, and flip on the switch for my (eventually, battery-powered) light. It was a sign for the muse. Dario, a real bohemian, installed that switch when he had the studio. The walls were a mishmash of concrete and odd colors, and I had to stop a well-meaning neighbor from filling holes and “neatening” things up. But now the muse is gone, with the ensuing marauders. I am beyond distraught.