Printemps


Wednesday 25. 02. 09 I was talking to someone the other day and they said that the weather will change after the 15th and indeed it has. The mimosas are blooming and some cherry trees too. Yesterday I went to my engraving class and it was warm enough to work outside in just a T shirt. Recently I have been working on a large canvas called Textured Landscape see above. It is not finished yet but I am quite happy with the way it is coming along. I did some monoprints at my class yesterday and next week we will try linocuts.

Downtown

Sunday 15. 02. 09 Yesterday went into Montpellier to get my urban fix. It was a beautiful sunny day and I took the noon bus. En route noticed that the landscape was alive again, with mimosas blooming everywhere. One of the advantages of bus travel is that you can see the landscape rather than concentrating on the road, altho you don’t get the smells that you discover riding on the scooter. Managed to to find a Moleskine notebook at the Fnac for my journal and then wandered over to the Musée Fabre for the Emile Nolde exhibition. An interesting show and I realised that I knew nothing of Nolde’s life or his early paintings which ranged from images from German mythology, peasant life, through to the night life of Berlin to religious paintings. My favourites were his seascapes. There was also a section devoted to his graphic work which included etchings, lithographs and woodcuts. He was extremely prolific and even survived the war under the Nazis painting watercolours (he was forbidden to paint in oil!). After this I went over to the old quarter of town to the vernissage of my friend from St Matieu Gérard Bru. Great show with over forty paintings. After all this culture, I caught the bus back to Clermont. Today I had a tasty lunch chez Giselle and Jonathan. Great food, good conversation and a wonderfully convivial atmosphere. C’était vraiment un bon week-end!

An odd week


Friday 06. 02. 09 It has been an unusually  wet week in Clermont with 4 days of rain and very little sunshine. I now realise why they have the canals everywhere; where there was normally a trickle this week there was a torrent. En route to the HyperU I noticed that there were camels and lamas grazing on the parking lot – the circus was back for 2 days. Also on Tuesday on the way to Octon for my etching class I noticed snow on the plateau. Strange times. I was supposed to go over to St. Mathieu this week to do some en plein air studies of le Pic du Loup but because of the weather I cancelled. I finally finished a landscape I have been working on since before Christmas shown above and I’m now working on a large painting showing the textures of the landscape. Hopefully next week the weather will improve and I can paint outside. Went to a vernissage at the wine store beneath Le Tournesol, liked the wine not so sure about the paintings.