A Radiant Model

The Monday life drawing group was in for a special treat this month. A beautiful, radiant and very pregnant model posed for us.

We were all aware of an intimate dialogue between the expectant mother and her son.

Quince jelly

Out on a ramble with the dogs a few days ago, I collected some fallen quinces in an abandoned field.

To make quince jelly, just chop them up and throw them in a pot, cover with water and boil. When they are soft, mash them up a bit and strain into another pot through a colander. Add about the same amount of sugar again and heat until boiling, skimming off foam. Then bottle and you're all set for the winter. Absolutely delicious with pain perdu, or French toast, on a cold and foggy morning.

Alice Neel

A fabulous documentary about the painter Alice Neel by her grandson was most inspiring the other evening. She persisted on painting portraits of people often in isolation from the rest of the art world, as it was the time of abstract expressionism in New York. She lived in dire poverty most of her life, even spending her welfare cheques on paints rather than on food for her children.

Yesterday a model from Cambodia posed for the my Monday night drawing class. Alice's influence is palpable, as well perhaps as that of South African painter Irma Stern. I am really enjoying painting in rich colours and patterns at the moment.

Milton Glaser

Just over thirty years ago, I took a class with Milton Glaser called Design and Personality. It was such brilliant class that a friend of mine who wrote for The New Yorker wrote a piece about my experience for The Talk of the Town.

I recently stumbled across a film about Milton on Netflix called Milton Glaser: Inform and Delight. It blew a lot of cobwebs out of my head about art, design, social responsibility and priorities. Try to see it.

The Big Draw event in La Sirène du Causse Gallery

October 1st turned out to be a beautiful Saturday here in Rignac, so I set up tables outside for the gallery's first Big Draw event.

This part of France was an ancient seabed 135,000,000 years ago and I had collected some fossils, books from the library and an assortment of coloured pencils, papers, magazines, crayons, brushes, scissors, paste and paints. The idea was to recreate a scene of the prehistoric ocean life here.

Enthusiastic artists started arriving soon after 10am to tackle the mural. We broke for a picnic lunch of bread, cheese, grapes, figs and windfall apples and continued into the afternoon. The pictures tell the story.