Artnotes: Coming Back

 Reflection Tangier Cafe   Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/linen  32 x 46"  81 x 116cm

 aster Flowers  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/linen  16 x 11  41 x 27cm 

​Reflections Murano  Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/linen  23.5 x 32"  60 x 81cm  

Artnotes:  Coming Back

The trouble with going to faraway places is coming back.  At first, there’s the rush of familiarity, home, relaxation, but then the bitter reality of rain, traffic and noise: the everyday.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my dog, my sunny yellow apartment (albeit small), the fabulous street market just below my window.  But try as I might, I can’t see Paris with my baby-eyes anymore.

I bought over six kilos of meat from the butcher, on account of he knew I was going to use the credit card, and Blair wasn’t there.  I haven’t got a good concept of metric weight, but when the rubber hit the road, that shopping bag was awfully heavy.  I froze a mass of steaks and five coquelets (baby roosters), as well as some veal.  That left a giant amount of veal remaining, so I brought out the old Petit Lux (we used to work there, when we were babies-cooking-in-a-French restaurant) recipe for blanquette de veau, and invited two visiting Americans to dinner.   We’ve had another meal, and four Harika dishes as well.

The dinner guests brought a daffodil plant.  Very Easter-y.  Which brings me to tomorrow and brunch for seven of us.  It’s really all the apartment can hold, seeing as there are paintings piled half-a-dozen deep all around the place.  My six kilos didn’t actually cover my plan for Easter, so I went back to the butcher and bought four large pigeons.  It’s brunch, after all, and half a pigeon each should do the trick.

The paintings are relenting, with sales up significantly this last week.   A sale of twenty to North America, and 8 to Central America.   Our television spot comes out in South America this month, and I have already had an inquiry for lessons from an Argentinean.  The painting workshop is slower this year, as if the universe knows hauling fifty pounds of supplies makes us tired.

The trees are nursing young leaves in the park, and the beds are planted with brilliant pink primroses.  One of Harika’s best dog friends died this week, moving her and Atlas, her closest dog friend, into more senior spots in the pissing order.  We will miss Canaille, a mixed breed of 13 years.

Blair is painting giant canvases since our return from Morocco.  The dining room is the studio, and it underscores one of the reasons we go away:  to have enough room to paint.