Artnotes: Fast Potato

 

Baseball Players   Laurie Pessemier  acrylic/pen/paper 8 x 11.5"   21 x 29cm    90.00 each or 4 for 200.00 Baseball is one of the things I miss about summer in America, and I am writing this on opening day 2025. I enjoy live baseball of all sorts – young people, local teams, farm teams, college ball.  I imagine finding my place in the stands, sitting in the setting sun, watching the warm up.  I can smell popcorn and hot dogs as I write; cheap beer.  I listen to fellow fan chatter.   Maybe we’ll go to a game in Bologna this summer.   Blair and I followed a college league team one summer (https://baseballpainting.blogspot.com/)  –  it was an early foray into figure painting, which occupies me right now. Eurospin Ranunculas   Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas   18 x 15"   43 x 38 cm  475.00 Orange Ranunculas   Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/paper   17 x 24"   43 x 61 cm  275.00 Our yard and the adjoining fields look like Ireland, they are so green.   The yard is full of some rather creepy puff balls which turned out to be (according to google lens) pine tree truffles.  We did not eat; mice did.  The wild flowers are coming on, and I’ve made a planter of wild primroses and pinky/purple flowers (lungwort).   Our ranunculas from the Eurospin are outstanding. The week has been taken up with sending out painting files for potential shows.  I am always a bit skeptical when they want me to talk about the painting – why did you paint this, and what are you saying.  In fact, I am sitting at my easel letting my muse work through my own hand.  I think most artists, visual, literary or musical are doing the same.  Take that, AI.   Magic is involved. We just got back after 4 weeks in Stimigliano, the potatoes I left in a cool, dark place had sprouted enormous eyes (why can I never stop that?).   I thought about planting them, but potatoes aren’t pretty in the yard.   I decided I could toss the potatoes, baseball style, out into the field beyond our house: like spring training, and later I’d see if they grew.    One potato, two potato, and on the windup for the third, Berlino stood in the path of my 95 mile-per-hour fast potato.  I clocked him in the snout, and he cried out in pain.  I immediately got down to his level (after chasing him -- he was scared of me!) and took a look.  No blood, but I did find some nasty tooth decay, which had nothing to do with the clobber.   Lungwort  Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/paper  8 x 11.5  21 x 29cm  90.00 A trip to the vet ensued, and a cleaning/extraction.  In fact, it turned out the tooth which looked so poorly was a baby tooth that had never fallen out.  With sparkly white teeth and minus a milk tooth, the bill was the cost of a family of four in the bleachers at Fenway.   Sign up for Artnotes by contacting me at lfpessemier@gmail.com INVITING All Artists to present their Work:   Paint, Literature, Crafts, Food.... Pessemier's Sunday Salon Weekly on Sunday  No Reservation Necessary   How it works: Bring a piece of your ART: that could be visual, like painting or printmaking; or literary, as in poetry or prose; or crafts, like metalwork or knitting; or food, or music.  Something you made, or feel particularly inspired by.  You have about 5 minutes to present, and we'll ooh, ahh, or answer questions you have.  You can also come and see how we work before diving in.  Just show up on Zoom at a minute or two before the hour.    No selling, no networking until after everyone has presented.  NO POLITICS please. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88093708954?pwd=M04zNHB4dFZkREp3bThweUd1YnVDZz09 Meeting ID: 880 9370 8954 Passcode: 886402 Rome 8PM; NY 2 PM; LosAngeles 11AM

Artnotes: The Next Hand

 

Red Ranunculas   Laurie Pessemier  acrylic/canvas  16 x 14"   40 x 35 cm  450.00

“What if it’s wonderful?” I ask Blair, my only audience.  “What if when our money is worthless, friends and family live in a separate world, we are at our wits end, and we do something completely different? And it’s WONDERFUL?”    Tell me another one, Pollyanna.  Figures, Words    Laurie Fox Pessemier  8 x 6"   20 x 15 cmAcrylic/paper  90.00 What seems like a million years ago, when our business went kaput, our dog died, and everything we imagined and worked for had changed, we moved halfway around the world to Paris with almost no money.   My first few days there I woke up thinking I’d never be lighthearted again, and then, somehow, the sun came out, the birds sang, and we were smiling.  It got better and better and better.  Blair and I started painting again.   We felt that lightness that comes from being free.  We embarked on a new, better life. You can’t do anything when you are clinging onto the past.  Let go of the flotsam and jetsam, and when you see it, swim toward a new shore. The Show   Blair Pessemier acrylic/canvas  13 x 16"   33 x 40cm   475.00 I have been reading Vlacav Havel’s letters from Prison.   He was a poet/playwright dissident who led the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia.  A bit of a Pollyanna, like me, he accentuated the positive aspects of his hard labor prison time.   He wrote, and thought while enduring horrible conditions.  I regret the poems and plays he never got to write; but yes, he later became president of the Czech Republic (1989-1992) leading and inspiring so many  people. Human    Laurie  Pessemier  Acrylic/paper   9 x 12"  24 x 30 cm   90.00 Another remarkable story of this ilk is from Italy, the Island of Ventotene.  Mussolini set up prison camp (actually on an adjacent island, Santo Stefano), from the remnants of a Bourbon jail built two centuries earlier.  700 opponents of Fascism were housed here, including Altiero Spinelli, who, with some fellow prisoners, wrote the “Ventotene Manifesto” in 1941.  This document became the basis for the European Union in 1984, adopted as the   “Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union”, or the “Spinelli Plan”.    It is very timely right now, as the enormous population of the EU is forming their defense. I am looking for that next hand to grasp, for the next turn in the road. I am writing and painting and remaining ultra-aware of future possibilities.   It will be summer again. Rolling Over    Laurie Fox Pessemier acrylic/paper 9 x 12"  24 x 30 cm  90.00 Sign up for Artnotes by contacting me at lfpessemier@gmail.com INVITING All Artists to present their Work:   Paint, Literature, Crafts, Food.... Pessemier's Sunday Salon Weekly on Sunday  No Reservation Necessary   How it works: Bring a piece of your ART: that could be visual, like painting or printmaking; or literary, as in poetry or prose; or crafts, like metalwork or knitting; or food, or music.  Something you made, or feel particularly inspired by.  You have about 5 minutes to present, and we'll ooh, ahh, or answer questions you have.  You can also come and see how we work before diving in.  Just show up on Zoom at a minute or two before the hour.    No selling, no networking until after everyone has presented.  NO POLITICS please. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88093708954?pwd=M04zNHB4dFZkREp3bThweUd1YnVDZz09 Meeting ID: 880 9370 8954 Passcode: 886402 Rome 7PM; NY 2 PM; LosAngeles 11AM  (NOTE -- we are accomodating the US time change this week )

Past Present Future

Bologna Gate  Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/linen    25 x 40"   70 x 100 cm   

Into the Night   Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/linen 12 x 72"  30 x 183 cm

View of Cervo   Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/linen  13 x 18  33 x 46 cm

 Pine by the Sea  Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/linen  13 x 18  33 x 46 cm

Lemon Tree Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/panel  12 x 12  30 x 30cm

Learning to sail     Laurie Fox Pessemier    Acrylic/linen  11 x 16"   27 x 41 cm

Fisherman's house    Blair Pessemier   Acrylic/linen  13.5 x 17.5"  60 x 45 cm

Ranunculas in full bloom    Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/panel   12 x 12   30 x 30 cm

Not so sunny-rise    Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/wood  10 x 14"  25  35 cm

Ranunculi in a Pot   Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/linen  16 x 19.5   40 x 50cm

Guys at the beach   Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acyrlic/linen  8 x 10"  20 x 25 cm

Wave    Laurie Fox Pessemier   Acrylic/linen  11 x 16"  27 x 41 cm

Past Present Future

For years, I have been wanting to go to the floral market at San Remo Italy.  Back in the early 00’s, when I was painting flowers all the time, we made a special trip to the Riviera di Fiori, the “flower Riviera” to see the greenhouses and flowers.  That time, we never got to the proper wholesale “mercato”, based on a bum steer from the hotel.   It has been the story ever since, and I’ve been by San Remo several times.

This trip, we actually got up to the entrance, but were too late for the flowers, almost.  In the dumpster outside, were a plethora of Ranunculi – I reached in and grabbed 2 dozen bunches!   It actually worked out perfectly, as I would have chosen these very flowers, and I didn’t have to produce my less-than-current business license (from France, not to mention) and these were totally FREE.

We’ve been painting a lot here in Cervo, Italy.  It has a lot to do with no interference and a change of venue, I think… NOBODY here speaks to us, which is a bit of a shame.  Meanwhile, I plan outings to new places where at least we can order dinner, ask directions.   I cannot understand what is making these people so grumpy – I realize we are tourists, but some don’t even offer a buon giorno when faced with ours.  It is unlike the Italy I know, from Rocca Malatina to Bologna to Modena. 

I tell people I moved to Italy because Pasquale, a Roman, moved into our building in Paris. Every morning he would greet me with a big smile and a “Good Morning, Laurie”.  I told Blair I wanted to move where he came from.  We got close (to Rome), but chose to be closer to friends in Modena and Castelfranco.  And everyone in Rocca Malatina wishes Blair, Harika and me a BUON GIORNO, or SALVE or CIAO!

Blair is working on a big painting and I am painting lots of smaller work.  My vistas are inundated with my favorite painting color, turquoise.  This also allows me to use the opposite color, my true favorite color, red.  I like to paint smaller, and try as I might to do the big painting, it just doesn’t suit me.  My memory eye is smaller, I guess, than Blair’s is.   It is like the screen at the movie theatre – if I must move my head/eyes to take in the whole scene, the effect is lost.  Small, I can recall/translate just how those dogs looked at the beach; how that fellow was holding his hand, the color of the sunlight as it peeked (and now it’s gone) through the clouds.  And even though I mostly paint en plein air, I depend on my mind/memory to define certain aspects of the picture.     It might account for Blair’s greater precision, and my humor.

I am constantly thinking about my home in Rocca M.  I’m cooking up ideas for the basement, which is a wonderful windowed space full of summer plants at the moment.  I am thinking of year round herbs, and a little wine tasting room down there.   I’ll hook up some wonderful light bulb system a la the champagne caves at Moet Chandon (can we serve it?).    It will be cool in the summer.    Ah, future.