Curtain of wisteria, mushrooms and fresh eggs welcome me home

"Cata-RINE!"
Eugene bellows my name from the road. I rub the sleep from my eyes and stumble down the steps.
"Tiens. J'ai des champignons pour toi."
Mushroom omelet for breakfast- yum. I get dressed quickly, put on the kettle, and hurry down to Mme Bouyssou for some fresh milk and eggs.
It's good to be home

Escape

OK, 'fess up time. I'm not into this blogging stuff. And I am not really into French winters either. I am, ahem, in Cape Town for a couple of months, munching on lotus flowers. But managing to get some work out between tai chi, swimming, mountain walks and reading. This is the jacket I am working on for a wonderful story I am illustrating about Somalian refugees.

Lunch with Madame Murat

Had a late birthday lunch with friends today at a new country restaurant- new to me anyway, though it has just celebrated it's 100th anniversary and has survived through five generations of the same family, and two world wars. An Australian francophile, Mary Moody, has just come out with a wonderful book on the restaurant. I have swiped a few of her photos as well as her book title for my blog. If you can't get to the restaurant, buy the book! (Better for you waistline...sigh.)

Winter harvest

Quinces and squashes litter the stone steps up to my studio. I grab a few to paint before turning them into preserves and soups over the wood stove.

A spot of warm color on a grey day

On the way to my studio, bright orange persimmons hanging in my neighbour's barn caught my eye. The illustrations for a book about the Sudan would have to wait.

An Unexpected Invitation

There are always adventures when my painting workshops move into the field. In September, I took my group to Loubressac where we planted ourselves in front of the formidable gate of the redoubt itself- the Chateau. Someone in pedal pushers and flipflops came through the gate and bustled around us with a witch's broom. "J'espere que nous ne vous derangerons pas..." I ventured. "Not at all," she replied. "If we have to leave, we'll just drive over you." A few minutes later, we were impulsively invited in to tour the courtyard, the garden with its magnificent views over the Dordogne valley, and even the chateau by the chatelaine herself, whom we had mistaken for the housekeeper.

The Day we Danced in Underpants

The picture is a detail from the jacket of The Day we Danced in Underpants by Sarah Wilson, a funny rhyming farce set in 18th century France. I am two weeks late, but hope to send it off to Tricycle Press tomorrow.

I seem to be too busy with teaching, visiting schools and book illustration to do my own work. But the little gallery in the barn is ready and waiting: walls jointed with ochre tinted filling, mosaic floor completed, spotlights strung and positioned...

After this book, I have two more to do, and hopefully then I will get down to some serious painting.

Pied Pipering in France

I may be a children’s book illustrator, but Pied Piper I ain’t.

Getting 18 American schoolteachers and librarians to my little French village of Rignac in southwest France, was like herding the proverbial cats.

One car got tangled up in the periferique around Paris and arrived via Lyons. One car broke down in Chateauroux so its passengers had to train down as another car with automatic transmission could not be located. The last straggler, a Mom who couldn’t miss her daughter’s graduation back home, arrived by train a few hours later (much later…five in the morning), but eventually they all were here, enthusiastically armed with paintbrushes, stretched paper and little tubs and tubes of Prussian blue, Alizarin crimson and Cadmium yellow for my weeklong watercolor workshop.

The excitement of waking up in a French country farmhouse quickly shook off any traces of jetlag. At seven am, they were up and ready to explore the picturesque village of Autoire on the way to the market in Saint-Céré where they filled baskets with cheese, farm bread, saucisse and pêches plates before returning to my barn/studio for class at 9:30am.

After a day of mastering washes, executing magnificent “watermelon haiku”, and replicating the texture of ancient oak doors, they were ready for more adventures.

They stripped and dipped in the Alzou River on the 12-kilometer pilgrimage route from Rignac to Rocamadour on a warm summer evening. They descended the gouffre de Padirac for an underground boat trip past towering stalagmites and tites, followed by a picnic on the river. They quaffed down bière pressions and whooped for the “Texan” dancers at a local Fete de Musique on midsummer’s eve. They learned how to make gougères and crème brulée with a local chef, and admired the 20,000 year old painted horses and etched mammoth in the caves at Peche Merle.

Most nights, I would find a few avid painters burning the midnight oil in the barn/studio, adding final touches to their paintings before turning in for the night. Pressure was on- I had invited the mayor as well as some other prominent locals to view the works and savor the products of the cooking class at the end of the week!

The show was a great success. Everyone oohed and ahhed appreciatively at the paintings suspended on twine with clothespins. A local connoisseur introduced the group to a sampling of the best French red wines from Cahors, the Cote de Rhone, Burgundy and Bordeaux. My farmer neighbor (and protagonist of Spree in Paree and Porc in New York), Monsieur Monteil (alias Monsieur Monmouton), grumbled between signing books that the newspapers and television people hadn’t been alerted, concerned he was missing out on his 15 minutes of fame.

The week ended with a visit to the medieval town of Sarlat, a canoe trip down the Dordogne and the Fete de St Jean, the village bonfire when à la tradition, the locals tossed last winter’s straw mattresses into the fire.

After loading up with antiques at the brocante fair in Gramat on Sunday morning, the group bid me adieu and set off for Paris…and I went to bed for a week.

After so much snow, I spied my first flowers behind the barn last week- pierceneige, or snowdrops. They were soon followed by daffodils, shy violets, forsythia and a minute sky blue flower. Today the market in Figeac was full of flowers- pots of pansies, cyclamen, tulips, daffodils and red and pink azaleas. I came home with the back seat of my car covered in mimosa that had been brought up from Nice. My friend, Elisabeth, who is from Saint Remy, was overcome with nostalgia as she breathed in their fresh fragrance.
This is my little barn. I have spent sixteen years fixing it up. It was a ruin when I bought it for $3000, but now it is ready to welcome painters, writers and musicians. This is where I hold watercolor workshops, Laurel and Hardy film festivals, and host yummy meals. I am looking for a cheap second hand video projector so we can have Friday night soups and movies in winter, now that I have a warm woodburning poele. Anyone know where I can get one?
My Rolls, and my fourfooted loverboy. This hangar, behind the barn, is a wonderful shady place where my students and I lunch in summer. Who would have thought that one could get so hungry painting in watercolor, but we do. This year, however, I reckon we are going to have to hold back on the pates, cheeses, and breads and follow the South Beach plan. Some of my clothes haven't seen the light of day for a good few years.

The problem with portraits

The subject of these paintings is a pretty young girl I painted five times, three times from life and finally just working from photographs. The first portrait is painted from photographs. I like the second one best, because it's fresh and lively. It was painted from life. But the mother didn't recognise her daughter. I am very influenced by the confident, competent drawing of the impressionists and don't really like tight realistic portraits, especially when the subject is a child. I like a suggested, inspired, and personal interpretation of the subject. But when I get knotted inside, the painting doesn't work.

I have found comments on Robert Genn's website, www.painterskeys.com, very helpful. Robert raises topics biweekly and a vast international community of artists respond. The most recent email inspired a lengthy debate between several other artists and me, about getting bogged down artistically.

Two commissioned paintings I am working on. I love painting people, but I have a distinct style and perception; it's perhaps a little rough for some people. I like a slightly unfinished look, because to me the painting is more alive that way. It still breathes. I prefer working from life. There is an element of speed because time is limited, especially when painting young children. I have to go for for the most important features rather than getting bogged down in detail. Though in these two cases, I have worked quite a lot subsequently from photographs I took at the session.
The moment of truth has arrived- I have sent off the images and wait nervously for a reply. Whether my approach meshes with the sitter's, or rather the commissioner's expectations is another matter.

Luckily for the birds, I tossed some suet balls studded with seeds into my shopping basket a few days before the storm. The birds are for the most part mousy brown sparrows, though there are some lovely yellow and blue masked tits(?) and some tiny red breasted robins too. Peaches spent the whole day in front of the window, trembling with excitement.

On my way down to collect the milk this evening, a ferret slinked across the road. The birds have to be pretty vigilent around here in winter. Foxes and badgers also hunt at night.

45 centimeters of snow fell on Rignac yesterday. The locals shake their heads in disbelief. Even M.Cabrolet, the oldest farmer in the village, has never seen the like. This is my neighbour's house. Mme Bouyssou provides me with fresh eggs and a pint of warm milk every morning.
Thabo is doing his nut. Who would have thought that we had lunch at this very table in the sunshine and shirtsleeves three days ago...

This is a detail from the jacket art for my new book Vinnie and Abraham, written by Dawn FitzGerald. It's a great story about the very young woman who was commissioned by Congress to sculpt Abraham Lincoln for the Capitol building in DC. I post it off tomorrow, and hopefully will have a bit more time for my own sketching and painting.

Here is a small oil painting of flowers and quinces on my table that was inspired by my love of Cezanne. I wonder how many people over the years have been inspired by the "father of us all", as Picasso called him. I did this painting in about an hour, and am not sure whether it is finished. Does the unpainted canvas bother you?

Cezanne died one hundred years ago this year. He has to be my favourite painter. Here is a beautiful study to share with and inspire you. It is called Still life with apples, and is in the Getty Museum.

I am still slogging away on the jacket. No sketching for the moment, but lovely foggy walks with Thabo.

Another cold day. Where is the sun? Thabo and I climbed up the other side of the valley to look for it. We left Peaches sleeping in the chair. When we got back two hours later, she was still in the same position. However as soon as I started painting her, she moved. Cats.

Far too cold to sketch outside today. I warm my hands around a steaming bowl of milky coffee and gaze out through the frosty window pane at the grey sky. Across the street, amongst the detritius in my neighbour's barn, I spy two pointy ears above a bale of hay. I cross the street with an offering of food, but the ears disappear.

This afternoon, the sun finally managed to push its way through the clouds and shine for a few hours. I took Thabo and Peaches out for a walk, to check on the new lambs that were born in bitter weather between Christmas and New Year. I can't imagine why sheep lamb in the middle of winter but they do.

I took along my sketchpad, and arrived in time to see Antoine, the old refugee (from the Spanish Civil War) pitching hay into the sheep manger. It made a nice sketch.

New Year's Resolutions

Mine are already beginning to fade as my head recovers from a wild night of village feasting and feting beginning on the 31 and continuing well into the 1st. There were flagons of champagne. There were pots of foie gras. There was even a boar roasting on a spit above the fire. And there was far too much dancing for these creaky old bones.

In New York I would be in bed with my book and cocoa by 9:30. Will I be able to keep up with the pace of life in Rignac? I heard this part of rural France was quiet in winter- mortel meme. I also heard that the winters were mild... I feel like a Dickensian creature as I make my way gingerly down the icy steps to the cellar to retrieve faggots of wood for me fire. Brrrrr...

Here is a picture of the Rignac I have known and painted for the last fifteen years- Rignac in summer. Will I be able to survive here the whole year round? Stay tuned.