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.