Epilogue: Completed Vineyard Painting and Inquiry

Dear Friends,
I have done some studio work on the vineyard painting and it is complete enough to sit in a corner waiting for inspiration to touch it up. By the way, they have a website under construction http://www.chateaubourguet.fr/index.php.

Everyone is welcome to stop by the Yellow Boat Studio, Salt Marsh Pottery Building, 1167 Russells Mills Rd., South Dartmouth, MA 02748, Tel 508.636.4813 and see the result and, please, critique. Several have already.

 The question is where do we take this blog now? We have been delighted with how much delight our friends and family have derived from it. We would like to hear from you. jp@saltmarsh.com The general consensus so far seems to be "get out there and have more adventures and tell us about them." Of course, we will try to get back to Southwestern France, maybe rent a gite (summer cottage). I want to paint Michele's cows (black and white) and Anya's (rust and white). We already miss it and the warm friends we made. Russia has been suggested. Or Norway. Or Istambul. Or Venice. In September we go to Oregon and there may be an RV adventure to some wild area or a tour of the many vineyards and wineries. Let's see if they will fill up our jerry cans with new wine as they will in France. Somehow wine, especially ROUGE, keeps comming up with me.  I will keep making occasional posts to this blog but will not, pending your sugggestions, email out a general notice of posts until another adventure is afoot.

Ca va? Ca va bien. Au revior. Bon journee.

JP & Betsy 

   

JP Post for Wednesday June 29, 2011 Homecoming

Painting of Vineyard Mostly Done – Homecoming

I have completed what I could, the final tweaking, a bit more cobalt in the upper atmosphere, less definition in the clouds, dark and shady areas in the vines, the elusive reds in the rocky soil, all burned in memory now, will have to wait for my studio. We have made the customary entry in the Chateau artists log, my entry for June 2011. Betsy has solicitously tended to my every domestic comfort as the intense and obsessed artist required, minding that my ears stayed attached. She even hung the sheets out in the bright sun and clear air. As I finished my final bottle of oak barrel aged red with a hint of black currant followed by Roquefort on a crusty baguette, she said, “Don’t expect this when we get home.”

  Ahh, home, the adoring dog, the gift of flowers, chocolate and wine from friends who housed wedding guests there while we were away, the view of the marsh. Not too bad. Time to dream of the next adventure. And I get to sleep with the boss.

JP   

PS The 2011 Tour de France will pass right by our village of Vindrac-Alayrac, right through the middle of my painting in that tine of trees which hides route D91. Please click this link.

 

Betsy's Post for Wednesday, June 29 - Postscript

Postscript June 29, 2011

We called Jinnet as soon as the plane touched down.  “ Our plane just arrived in Boston and we’re  headed toward the gate. Eric is back in Kabul by now and Elsa must be in the air on her way to Dubai.” “ Welcome Home,” says Jinnet, “ I’m in the car and on my way to Lowes.” 

       
Elsa reported from Dubai that she and Eric are both fine and will be vigilant.  We will all be glad to have them back here. She arrives the first week of August, Eric’s contract is over in late October.

So we notice the rotten traffic around Boston, the wooden houses, the tendency to listen to news, ( We didn’t read a paper or listen to a broadcast the entire time), and the much wetter climate. There are many many, many  more cars on the road.  Here any inch of exposed earth has two or three things growing out of it. The woods are dense with undergrowth. The whole place is dense by comparison, and there are so many more trees.  The bittersweet I had cut to the ground in May has new shoots 5’ long, and when I walked into the grass, 7 mosquitos popped onto my ankle.   The marsh house looked great with new siding; various people had left us Red Wine! And chocolates and a little bouquet and  three amazing photographs of the marsh !  AWWW . 

I thought I had lost weight, mais non. On the other hand, I am tan. Bozy was glad to see us; we were glad to see him. The garden looks great and the pottery looks totally shipshape and in top form.  WHAT A CREW! Thank you, Heather, Audrey, Becky, Donna, Lisa, and Jenny.  

From now on, JP’s JOB IS TO PAINT!  

We are glad to be home. It is time to be in the day and fully launched. Au Revoir, nous amis. See you soon in person.

Betsy

Betsy's Blog June 27, 2011

Betsy’s Blog, June 27, 2011  Monday. Our last day here this trip.

From Sunday, June 26, 2011,   JP WILL PUBLISH WHEN HE HAS FINISHED THIS PAINTING. THERE ARE FINAL DETAILS WANTING.

Well, Elsa is out swimming, JP has gone back to paint in the blistering heat, Eric is driving back to Toulouse to catch his plane to Amsterdam, Dubai and Kabul and I am here in the coolness of the huge stone hall thinking about washing the sheets, cleaning the kitchen and polishing off the last of the green plums. Bittersweet. First off, though, for those of you on the edges of your seats, Eric is really wonderful. Elsa is very happy and they have lots of silly fun together.  The objectives of the days changed (for me, not JP) when they arrived; we have been going to the patisserie every morning for café crème and croissants and a long slow look around at the passing world.  Charles took them to all his favorite vendors in the Saturday market and bought them a selection of cheeses that was divine.  The Roquefort really is worth crawling on your hands and knees a hundred miles through the desert for.  The three of us went to Albi, saw the cathedral, Toulouse Lautrec’s museum, and then sat in one café to share a seafood salad featuring large shrimp with googley eyes, strips of salmon, some rubbery strips that were delicious and a yummy mush of something. I am not doing it justice.   Then we moved to another café where Elsa cemented all the stereotypes by putting ice cream first on her nose then on her cheeks to the ultimate delight of the people at the next table who had first tried to ignore her. We told them she was Canadian.

We saw yet another amazing farm machine. This one is big, yellow and must get contracted out for harvesting wheat all over Southern France. The driver sits in the middle of a glassed in cab way up top of the modern space age looking thing. He must have music as well as air conditioning piped in. The undercarriage can adapt to any slope, gully, whatever the land offers. The cutters on the front slice through maybe 12 feet of grain at a time. He went through field after field and was working at 11:30 last night when we fell asleep. This morning JP said they started up around 9.30. What we can’t figure out is why they cut one field and not another, in fact, there is a field right near JP where they left the last 100 feet uncut.   Perhaps fields have divided ownership.  Oh well. A byproduct is that the air was full of chaff and Eric’s allergies were in full flood. It is hot but the pool is really cold. It is a lovely combination.

This has been such a month. We are so grateful to Charles and Mandy for dropping  heaven into our laps.   It has been wonderful to write this to you all as it helped me lay down the memories as we did it. We’ll love to see you all again so soon. It is the consolation for leaving here. We plan to go from here by 5:30 tomorrow morning.. We’ll go from Toulouse to Madrid and home, Elsa will go 5 hours later to Amsterdam , Dubai and Kabul. And life will go on in its merry and surprising way. Au Revoir a toutes nous amis.

JP Post for Wednesday, June 22, 2011

 

So Much to Paint, No More Time

I am struggling with a detail of the grape vines, essential to get it right.  Yet here I am somewhere in this landscape that is saturated with history and blood where humans have created art for thirty thousand years. That tiny white dot to the left of the Vineyard buildings, that is me, under a market umbrella painting grape leaves with the point of an 0 size sable brush. It is quite unlikely anything I paint will end up getting knocked down at Sotheby’s for six figures, or in a limestone cave for that matter. French tourists stop to take pictures, local drivers-by pause and give a thumbs up, Arrière-Grand-Mere (great grandmother) from the Chateau B******* vineyard pronounces it “magnifique!”  So much to paint, no more time.

JP

Betsy’s Blog, June 22, 2011

    From June 21,2011 Summer Solstice

            It’s a good thing we are coming home next week; these are getting longer and longer.

At about 5:15 this morning  it was getting light, and the sun won’t set until 9:20 at least, tonight, probably 9.30. It will remain light until about 10.15. We routinely are  asleep before that.  17 hours of light. I’ve never lived in a place like this.  No wonder you can hear farm machinery at 9 PM.  JP is working on his last painting, a view from the road to Chateau B….. where we get our wine, across the rows of grapes and up to this place. It is a dramatically hilly scene and he’s doing wonderfully.

All the farmyards I have seen, and you drive right through them on lots of these little roads, have old machines and  parts, a car on blocks, grass and weeds growing through old tires.  But the grapevines are another matter entirely. Row upon row upon row they stretch to the horizon in rigid straight lines and every one is espaliered to two wires, the leaves on the top are the same height, all the grapes are within easy reach.  In spots where a vine has been replaced, the little new vine is set at the proper distance and has a blue plastic collar to protect it.  The ground is red, FULL of rocks and free of anything you could call a competing weed.  Many rows end with a small blooming rose plant.  It is a triumph of order. Yesterday we saw one of the guys driving a little old white Lamborgini tractor the size of a small kyboda  but with tank treads, going up and down between the vines. As it toiled, it sang: Shrieka shrieka ginga. Shrieka shrieka ginga. Shrieka shrieka ginga. (accent the second shrieka. The g’s are hard).  It was the age to have been spraying bolts like Robby’s old Baghoe. A machine with a heart.  There was a big yellow plastic tank fastened to the back. Monsieur had a long thin metal tube attached to the tank with a flexible hose. He would stop at any newly planted vine and all the roses, and poke the tube down into the earth beside it. I thought he was measuring moisture in the soil, but he was simply spraying water two feet down next to the plant’s roots.  That is targeted irrigation.  By the way, the roses are more susceptible to the diseases that infect grapes so they serve as an early warning system. Today I saw Monsieur working on something in the pipe connections. These machines work like Trojans and are held together by love and necessity alone.

 In the picture above, that looks down one of the shorter rows, you may notice the harrowing that has been done in the middle. The machine for that was under the tree. There is such grace and beauty in those tines.  The front of the same tractor has an attachment of upside down L shapes. Along the inner tops and the insides of those L’s are heavy rotating blades. Evidently they drive down the length of the rows, harrowing the center weeds out and cutting the vines down and along the sides all at once. Clever. I don’t know if this is a spring or fall job, but it is one I’d love to see.  It couldn’t be now with everything fruiting…. But what do we know?

Charles says that at one time there were 100 people living in these few houses up here. That number would have been necessary to do the work of the land. Now we look out on solitary men on their machines haying or plowing or tending the vines. What a different experience from all the millennia before the last 100 years when groups of men, women and children turned out to plant, or harvest, or glean. Think of the singing, the  flirting, the comments back and forth, the sudden loves, the broken hearts, and yes, the broken backs, the immense weariness and hopelessness for those who had no interest in the land.  Look at all the paintings. You have to pause and marvel that you were born now and not then.

.

By the way, stop signs here are just that. STOP, very helpful.

Also before I forget, the other day when I was at Prim’ Frais, (the grocery store with food but also things like soap and packaged coffee), there was the sound of a loud speaker, shouts and other noise and a bunch of vans went by covered with painted advertisements and people leaning of their windows waving.  All the store clerks went to the door to look and one of them ran out to the edge of the road. Soon the people in the vans were tossing things out of every window and she was scooping them up. The line passed on and she brought back her collection: a pen, a pad of paper, a small pack of cigarettes and a big chocolate bar. Apparently this is a “parade of promotion” going through little towns. When I stopped to get gas, the attendant was just coming back with her haul, which included a cloth shopping bag and a few other things.  I asked her how often this happened and she answered something about bicycles so I don’t think we were having the same conversation. As I drove home through the town, I could see other little knots of people comparing their goods and smiling.  Nice.

There are very few fat people here perhaps because of the much better diet. I think I have been losing weight myself. We’ll see soon enough. We find we eat less food and are easily satisfied.  We don’t cook, just “get by” on the bread, cheese, tomatoes, olives, pate, sausage and wine – and British Beer!  The wonderful cheese lady with her 7 named cows, “but of course!”, says she routinely wraps a cheese in her clothes( in her suitcase) when she goes abroad and never has a problem.  (Interesting aside. Her cow Revolution (born July 14) recently had a calf who was unnamed when I asked her.)  So I’m planning on that; I’m also thinking of bringing back some pesto somehow. If you are with TSA, our flight into NY on August 15 is on Japan Airlines… I’ll ask Elsa and her boyfriend, Eric, when they get here Thursday.  We can’t wait.

JP Post for Monday, June 20, 2011

Betsy makes imprints of French wayside wildflowers, JP shows progress on final painting, and There are Cows in France! 

The under painting is done on what will be my last painting here and I will have to scramble to get it complete. Betsy has gathered some wayside wildflowers and has made patterns for Salt Marsh Pottery, working beside an old wine press in the courtyard of the chateau. Cows! Black and white, red brown and white, all over the sloping meadows, in the purple alfalfa. I have taken photographs and I will attempt paintings at home but they will not do. Somehow must get back and paint them in the clean, clear light of Southwestern France. As I was painting in her vineyard yesterday Madame B***** critiqued my work then held out her cupped hands filled with fresh tree ripened reddish prune plums.

Betsy’s Blog for Monday, 6-20-2011

Picture: Stone table, St. Antonin and market

June 19, 2011  Dimanche

A Very Happy Wedding Day to Eliza and Erik Saturday! We thought of you two a lot, your families, and your friends. We wish you many many happy years together.

I wanted to get the 6 saucisson for 10 euros deal so we went back to St Antonin-Noble-Val by the scenic route. Ha. It’s all scenic. This took us by the standing stones near Vouer: six or eight very big narrow stones set on edge in a square and two even bigger thicker stones laid flat across. The total thing is about 5’ high and the size of three big picnic tables. JP thinks the table top was once one stone but sometime in the intervening 20,000 years, it cracked.  Mind you, we don’t know any of this, but it is set right on top of a broad open space and has a tremendous view off west and north, it looks Very Old,  and there are said to be standing stones in the area. So why not?  I’ll try to find out and issue a correction later.  We drove through beautiful land, past some recently sheared sheep and suddenly came out on a precipice. And there was the only guard rail I’ve seen in France: a solid stone edging about 2’ high. Beyond it and way, way down was the Aveyron river.  Farm fields crept part of the way up the far slope.  The road hugged the cliffs we were going down and you just know there are many as yet undiscovered caves around there, undoubtedly filled with wonderful paintings.  This landscape must go straight up through Lascaux, about 80 miles north. 

When we arrived, we needed a bathroom, naturally. JP found one unmarked near the Marie (Town Hall). The first room had a wall for men with an electric eye that sprayed a film of water on the wall when you backed away. He found this quite satisfactory.  The stall beyond had a porcelain bowl set flush (so to speak)  in the cement floor with a place for your feet. I am not as young as I was when I last saw this style.

We found the sausage table but not the seller. On the second or third return, I saw two women talking at another table and distinctly heard, “Oh, my god”. Thus we met Sarah, an English woman from Bath who has been living here for 20 years making beer with her husband. We needed to leave so she said she’d take the money for her friend who had gone off for morning coffee with his friends.  We picked out the sausages and additionally ended up with 6 bottles of genuine British stout with those porcelain snap plunger tops. Her kids are defending their title in some big race going on today, on their way to being in the Olympics, she hopes. On our way back to the car, we got two kinds of Pate, cherries, plums, and a rice and saffron with sausage hot dish for lunch, and 2 croissants, a baguette, three bags of olives, a map and a birdwhistle for the kids. Light hearts, empty pockets and home we went.

In Tonnac we looked for Gite (pronounced Jeet.: housekeeping holiday cabins.) There are some but we couldn’t find where. Check the internet, we were told.

This would be a good time to rectify my snarkiness about Cordes.  It is the walled town on the top of a hill further down the valley and is visible from many points around.  It is straight out of the Tres Riches Heures of The Duc Du Barry, a medieval manuscript illuminated with the months of the year, the fairytale illustrator’s dream and inspiration. I would have swooned in a heap if I had seen it when I was 11.  It is a big draw for the French too. Busloads of people come each weekend, and the car parking spots are often full. It was built in 1222 as the first bastide.  Bastides were new cities/towns planned by the landowners to concentrate the dispersed families into units easier to administer, (read “tax”). They didn’t want the high born because they would refuse to pay, or the serfs because they were already being ground down. But the people in the middle were enticed to come. Normally the concept was used on flat ground where grids were laid out, and the value of available property maximized.  Each person was given a bit of land outside the town “sufficient to ‘light a fire’- that is, to support a family.” Cordes was a combination of this and a walled defensive position. There was religious ferment at the time.  The Cathars from the south were making big inroads with rich and poor alike. They were dualists who believed in the good God in heaven who dealt with the invisible and spiritual and the wicked God, on earth who created visible matter. So they had no truck with the incarnation of God in Christ, the Old Testament, the worship of the cross and sacraments or, for that matter, the Roman Catholic church.  Well, you can just imagine! Hence the Albigensian Crusade coming down like a ton of bricks from the north, raping, pillaging and burning in the name of the True Christ.  In Cordes  three inquisitors from the north were tossed down the well in response to the burning of one of their number.   Now, the well in Cordes is up on the top in the old covered market. Dry in recent centuries, it  has been studied a few times in the last hundred or more years, each time with better and better measuring devices and machinery. It now appears that this well was originally 114 meters deep, around 350 feet?  That puts it below the local water table and insures that there was a reserve of water, “…modest but reliable, in times of siege..” (quotes are all from the wonderful guide book for Southwest France)  I guess collapsed rubble from the inside facing may have filled it in above the water line later on. Nevertheless, it is one of those engineering marvels that makes us all scratch our heads in wonder. How on earth did they accomplish such a feat 900 years ago? And more, what lamebrain would toss three fellows into such a water supply?  But promoters repeat the story and so have I.   In Cordes’ recent reincarnation, artists have moved in and striven valiantly to revitalize it with its twisting alleys, many gardens, and hugely appealing architecture.   Go Google it.   Cordes sur Ciel. The first listing will be images and you can see I have not exaggerated its charm. If you are anywhere near here ever, you should come see for yourself.

JP Post for 06.17.2011 - Note on 1100 Years of Elegant French Plumbing and Answers to Your Comments

JP Post for Friday, 06.17.2011

A Brief note on French Plumbing Design and Responses to your Comments

On French Plumbing:

Circa 1100 Left (not the roof drain)  Today - 2011 Right

Always-elegant design, great progress in effective sanitation over 1100 years. The one on the left drained into an open gutter that flowed, at the head level of pedestrians, into a narrow street. Medieval commentators noted the incredible stench of cities. The one on the right, all stainless steel, automatically flushes with an electric eye switch. 

Your Comments:

We are getting your comments and emails. It is awkward sending out with our regular email so I will do it here. Not in any particular order. If I have missed someone please let me know.

Jane S. - Thanks for letting us know you are getting this. Thinking of you.

Dylan Mc - Best to that character, your dad, and thanks for patching up the Marsh House.

Vickie C. – Hope your horse arrives in good shape. You and your sisters would feel right at home here, horses, cows, fields of alfalfa and hay.

Eva S. – There are numbers of organic ferme here. “Certifce Bio.” Annya, a Dutch lady makes the most incredible cheeses with her Dutch cows. All “bio”. By the way - Revolution just had a calf.

Sarah S. – Fabulous for pleine air painting here and the people get a delight seeing us set  up by the road. Lots of open country roads for Andy and his new bike.  Will check out links when we can connect.

Heidi O. – The French in this area do seem very generous about our language fumblings. They sound musical to me and speak with great clarity so that I can often get the general gist of the conversation.  All that is required is to make an effort to get them to rattle on. My bonjour and sa va go a long way. Everyone here has been kind, open and hospitable. More on OVERCOMMING MY FEAR OF FRENCH later. I think it deserves a blog to itself. This area is known as the Tarn district.

Non & Fred H. – Glad to know you are getting this. Anything you are curious about? Isn’t Seaver originally French. Sievre or some such. Hugenot refugees? Ask Tucker.

Peter M. – Nice to know you and Dora and the kids will be in Toulon. Any way you get to see France has to be great. Helas, that will a clean up for the next Artistes day for us. See you at BJ. Thinking of painting the shore birds, you know, all those jeaune fills in French bikinis that block the view of the ocean on a summer day.

Margot & Dave M. – No the Chateau is not for rent. I will ask our patron if he will entertain requests for a retreat time from other artist’s. And we should see what rental options there are here. You would make great companions for another adventure. Do you do plein air painting?

Jack & D. M. – That photo brought up indescribable feelings. Jinnet on my arm as we walk to her wedding ceremony. May I commission a print?

Roger K. – Thanks for the critiques. Look forward to discussing painting when we get back.

Vickie and Rock – No we do not sleep under the stars though this adventure reminds me of the intensity of the Grand Canyon cruise. The quiet here is the same! A screech of a hawk overhead, a cuckoo in the woods, crickets, and the light breeze. Often think of you and Rock and the rest of the crew and what great companions you would be.  And they do river trips nearby out of St. Antonin.

Larry L. – Thanks for the posts on Bozie. The red puppy from the vineyard Bourguet keeps me company here.

J & MA – Quite simply wish you were here. A future scheme?

Bonnie & Joe M. – thanks for supporting the possibility of lots of great French rouge.

Jim & Donna S. – thanks for critiques.  Look forward to seeing how your hay bales turned out. Think of you guys while out under sky with brush in hand.

Janet & Bob F. – Anything more you are curious about? We can receive email. Sending is klunky. Some setting I have not yet figured out.

Edgar & Mary Day – Keep in touch. Give us a call even if we cannot work out getting together. JP cell + 1 508 951 7911.

Peter & Sasha – A granddaughter’s birthday is major. Glad we could comply.

Joney S. – You are going to have a comparable adventure – taking a group of kids to Prague.

Curtis R. – I always thought of you as being everything sophisticated and knowledgeable about Europe - and you speak the language! Love hearing about your art career.

Harvey & Debbie – thanks for the encouragement. Let’s keep Betsy writing.

Pam P. & all Western Powels – Jake would go nuts – Vineyards and little wineries everywhere.  Tasting – I cannot abide dumping the leftovers down the sink. I swallow it all with a big grin. Best wine I have ever. Doing what we can to support the local economy. See you in September. HI to Babe and all cousins. Love to Aunt A.

Zack M. – Acrylics in luggage – no problem with TSA – include MSDS sheet as precaution. As I am a slow deliberate painter I find they just dry too fast. I am using them for the under drawing, thinned like ink in a small jar. 

Lar D. - Great to hear about your trip. Quiet is a rare and precious treasure. It is quiet here. See my comment to Vickie & Rock.

Wendy – Thanks for reminder Guilt. Guilt. Must look up that print.

Burneses - Thinking of you tomorrow  - Being a Father of the Bride is one of life’s most intense experiences. Glad you have Elsa there.

Carol B. – It’s Peace Corps with a delightful form of culture shock. Keep the jokes coming. We read them all.

Kathy & Jeff L. – This has to be a play. Cannot believe it is real.

Ann & Bob W. – keep in touch & will add you. Bob must know about the history of this region. There is heaps. And palpable.

John & Wen B. – I completely acknowledge the validity of your comment re women’s bottoms and men being asses and have no commitment to change. Speaking of which, I observed a wonderful one amongst the painting of the damned in the Albi Cathedral. Why amongst the deadly sin of envy is cause for delightful speculation. Oh, those wicked little monks. I propose a title for my doctoral thesis – Great Lady’s Bottoms in 30,000 Years of Art History, a definitive Anthology.

Brooke R. – Best to all at the Westport Art Group. I would love for Meredith WC to see this but she does not do computers.

Fondly thinking of you all.

JP 06-16-2011

JP Post for Thursday, 06.16.2011

The painting of the hay bales, left, is complete. It has been dry and hot for June so I put in an approaching thunderstorm for luck. It may rain tomorrow. I set up this afternoon in the vineyard overlooking the Chateau for visiting artists. You can see it on the crest of the hill opposite. The under drawing for the next painting is on the right. Madame B******* and her family who own Chateau B******* have given me permission. We drink their excellent wines every night. Betsy likes the rose. I love the hearty deep rouge. The new grapes are about the size of green peas. I will set up a market umbrella tomorrow. The sun is blinding. I will move the distantly seen city of Cordes Sur Ciel sixty five degrees on the horizon to fit it in to the picture. It cannot be ignored.  The wine colored dog must also be included as well as Betsy coming up the road on her walk. It is too difficult being an unreformed, unrepentant romantic. There is so much painting to be done. People stop to look and discuss my work and I am making friends and learning a little French.

JP

Post for 06.16.2011

Betsy’s Post   06-16-2011

Phooey, the pictures are too dark. There are writhing sinners on the left, a skull under the bust on the right. The gold chalices in the original picture are wonderful.

We went to Albi this morning. The driveway here was to be paved and indeed they were working on it when we left. There is a beautiful truck that mixes aspalt and gravel on site, JP says. Very efficient.  There was also to be a service in the church today. Perhaps a funeral?  Christine says everyone around here is old;  there is never a wedding or baptism.  Anyway, we drove to Albi  and after the requisite arguing back and forth, found a place to park, walked through the old streets, sensibly made into pedestrian use only, past upscale shops to the Plaza around the Cathedrale Ste-Cecile, patron saint of music,  the very plaza I drove  through in terror last week. The cathedral is the biggest brick cathedral in Europe. No, de monde! Enormous. Red. The guidebook says it was built  (1282-1382) “..not just to impress but overawe the faithful.”  One façade seems to be stone; I think it is the oldest part.  The plaza was brick , the cathedral was brick. Beaucoup de Brick. We got maps at the tourisme office then walked up brick walkways to a view down on a very manicured garden, over a wall and out to the Tarn, green and sweetly flowing like all the French rivers that we’ve seen. The pictures never do justice. Then we came back and went into the cathedral. It is dark, immense and every inch is brick covered with a thin layer of plaster. And every inch. EVERY INCH!  of  that surface is painted.  The ceiling, all those gothic curved pie shapes, way way up there, is a heavenly blue and gold like fine brocade all 325 feet of it.  The walls are covered with pictures of saints, battles, madonnas, etc. There are also very large areas of trompe l’oeil columns and geometric designs. The front wall – more than 100 feet high, I would guess, has the soaring pipes of an organ up top. ( I’d love to hear that.) Then it has a three level painting of Judgment Day. The saints with halos are on the top sitting quietly and primly in order, the next row down are just virtuous people, many of them clerics. They might be portraits, they seem so specific. They too are orderly as eggs in a carton. Then you get to naked people with hands in prayer walking into their graves at ground level. Some of them get raised up but some crash down through to HELL and things get interesting.  If you sit in the pews, you have to crane your neck up to see the heavenly layers, but hell is just a little above eye level. Everything is squirming around like worms in a bucket.  There are cauldrons of boiling sinners being stirred by Bosch like monsters, nasty things are happening to buxom ladies, people are being turned on a wheel over the infernal flames. Someone has a funnel and is pouring something into one man’s throat. (JP thinks that is he paying for all the wine he has drunk.) There are snakes and dragons and creepy crawly beaked things.  Oy It is terrific.  Clearly it was the fun stuff to paint and we bought postcards of all of it.  In a newly refurbished back room there was a museum with lots of reliquaries. Richly presented arm and jaw bones. I think I saw two skulls of Saint Cecilia, one big,(shown),one little. Lousy French makes for startling history.

 There is also a Toulouse Lautrec museum here but we decided that could be another day.  We left Albi and drove south on the tenuous possibility  that there was an art store in “ Puygouzon  on the road to Castres”. That was what we were told in the hardware store here by the British lady who interrupted my painful attempts to ask about paint. “Perhaps I could help?”  You bet your boots!  She had heard there was a store somewhere in that area.  We drove out of Albi, and things looked less and less likely. Why would there be an art shop out here in the fields? Same reason as back home: Urban sprawl. We found a feeder road that was essentially an industrial park. There were a lot of big new places to buy brick, kitchens, what all, and Kalidescope, a pad on grade shed  full of craft supplies. Michaels, in other words. They had everything; good oil paints, paper, brushes, scrapbooking papers, mosaic supplies, wool, even some large slabs of clay and some German casting plaster. Another time I could skip bringing my own supplies.  “Another time”, what sweet words.  We came back, stopping at a Corsican restaurant just outside of Cordes where JP had spectacular pate, and I had Truite Aveyron.   Finally, a French cream sauce.  It was wonderful even on lettuce.  I resisted licking my plate though it crossed my mind.  The French close shop from 1-3  or 2-4. It isn’t so you can take a long time to eat; it’s so you can eat wonderful food and take a nice nap. Which we did.  JP has now gone out to the Chateau B*****   to do drawings for the next painting.

Au Revoir mes amis!

Betsy’s Dispatch for Tuesday, June 14, 2011 

We missed yesterday as it was Pentecost so the Centre Social was closed.

        To expand on the annual Vide Grenier (Empty the Attic) Sunday morning. ( See JP's pictures above-or perhaps below).  It was in an open air fairground under some large trees near the Cerou River. To get there you had to cross on a bridge 10’ wide.  People were set up all around in no discernible order, with stuff on tables, blankets or hanging in the trees.  Five or six guys from the local fire department were there in red Tee Shirts inscribed with their department name, carrying around what looked like an old metal milk can of coffee and a box of fresh croissants to sell. They laughed and joked with everybody. We looked at lots of stuff , figurines, clothes, dishes, cut glass this and that, and lots of rusty old tools, latches, scales, ice saws, lots of old cds and beaucoup de coffee grinders. JP looked at a lot of those. We met Madame from the Chateau Bourguet and her husband there. She was very pleased as we said how much we liked the wine. The people here are so forgiving about our French. It is language stone soup: everyone gestures and smiles and pitches in a word they know and pretty soon we have a conversation. We found one man from Portugal near the Spanish border who has lived in France so long he has forgotten both Spanish and Portuguese. We told him we were from New Bedford with Beaucoup de Portuguese, but I don’t know if he understood us. (By the way, do not look for accuracy in my French here).  Anyway, he had a line of old Peugeot coffee grinders and we got a lovely one that marche bien still though it had a broken wooden edge on the top.  But the very best was the little unframed painting on canvas, about 12” by 9”, dirty and with loose paint in the upper right corner of the sky,  a landscape with a shepherdess watching  4-5 sheep on a bluff, a little river in the foreground, and in the background a little hill with a castle. A peinture du 19^th siecle!!!  Les Powels!!  JP thinks the antique frame, long gone, may have had the greater value and perhaps it was bought for that alone.  Pascal was the seller: a tall thin man with crooked uncared for teeth, narrow face, tentative air and a very sweet smile.  He gave the price.   We looked and walked around, met a man from Valpariso, Chile who left there when he was 22, about 29 years ago. JP had had him pegged as having Andean Indian background.  He said not many Americans come to this area. Too bad. But not for us.  We had decided since we scream American wherever we go – or maybe British, don’t know, we would embrace that and be the kind of Americans to make you and Obama proud…  Anyway, we went back to the painting and ended up buying it for all the Euros in our billfolds.  Euros are the prettiest folding money I know of with their pictures of cathedrals and aquaducts and that silver strip. The coins are very pleasing too.  Real money is back home in the bank, we devoutly hope. We can ask Charles how we did, but whatever he says, we are confident that we did splendidly given that it is such a truly wonderful, appealing little thing and we were not buying as an investment.  We are so pleased!!   We went to the car, then came back and got pictures of Pascal and me and the Moline de cafe man and me and the Volunteer Fire Department (Pompiers) and JP.  As JP says, more succinctly, they were cut from the same cloth as the Dartmouth volunteers, full of esprit de corps, loud, and proud of their service and rightfully so.  Bob Butler would have been right at home.

            Sunday afternoon we rushed into Cordes. There was a police trap set up in Vendrac but an oncoming car flashed the universal warning lights and we were very properly slow  as we went by the gendarmes.   Most people were leaving as we walked up to the St Michel cathedral on the top for a concert by the local community choir, 25 people in red and black lead by a small skinny guy with a long and bushy beard. He introduced the pieces, by Rachmaninoff, Zerlinka, Buxtehude and Bach.  The singing was thin, reedy, slightly flat and gawky, but wonderful.  Mark Doty has a poem about the transformation of the Provincetown hairdressers, grocery clerks, queens and town officials, into angels when they sing the Messiah. That was true here; amateurs that are brought together in the service of immortal music in a holy and echoing space really do partake of some sort of grace.  This may have been a more accurate reflection of how much of this music has been performed; there can’t have been too many Robert Shaw Chorales in the provinces.  Coming down we tried to figure out the one way streets leading in and out of Cordes, got home and had the coc au vin. Just yummy and no congealed fat on top of the gelatin. We’ll need more wine very soon.

JP's Post for 6-13-2011

JP Post for Lundi 06.13.2011

We found this 19^th Century souvenir genre painting at the Vide Grenier (Empty the Attic) at the Cordes Sur Ciel fairgrounds. I can learn something from this forgotten petit maestro. I showed Pascal, the dealer, my sketchbook. He minutely examined every page, little common language other than a shared passion for art. Wherever I go it is my best icebreaker. As for the local Cordes Sur Ciel firefighters, we are of a universal fraternity/sorority.

JP

Betsy's Post for June 13,2011

 

Betsy’s Dispatch for Lundi, 6-13-11.

 

            I went off to a French lesson with the divine Christophe that people at the Centre Social introduced us to.  The alley that leads to him curves down and around past shuttered and barred houses, enticing glimpses into gardens, and into #3 Place De something. We climbed to his study up 4 flights of open stairs with a delicate metal balustrade from which the wood handrail was peeling. He owns the whole building and has his school here: some bedrooms, some big rooms for immersion classes and some smaller offices.   We reviewed numbers and going to market, with a concentration on fromage. (cheese).   Fromage du Chevre (goat), de la vache ( cow) and du brebis  (ewe).  He had a large horizontal window looking out on the roofs of the houses in back all clumped together. All of them had the old red and lichen covered clay tiles that intersected in every possible angle. You could see nothing but roofs and some walls. It was very beautiful. I commented how wonderful it was that the houses all had natural colors that fit into the earth. He said regulations require it and pointed out a bit of red on the side of one house, all that was left of a colorful past. I say, Hooray regulations!  He thinks Cezanne looked at a lot of views like this one, and developed cubism from them. Why not?   As we went down the long street level corridor, he pointed out some places in the stonework where entrances had been filled. These were improvements made during the 100 Years War…

              Market Day in Cordes Sur Ciel, Saturday

        The O in Cordes is supposed to be pronounced like the A in awful. All OR combinations are. No wonder no one could understand me.  Christophe says always keep tension around your mouth. He also says I’m trying too hard. 

We bought cheese from two places and I blew my chance to do my morceau un pui trop-piu petite bit.   We bought a chicken, expensive and scrawny to my eye. Frank Perdue hasn’t been here to fatten up the hens in cruel and unnatural ways.   Perdu means lost, by the way. Hmm. The chicken came with long neck and head cum comb and beak  but minus brain, eyes, windpipe and all the rest of the business parts. Postscript: We cooked the chicken and there was lots of juice and NO fat. )  After we spent all our money, we climbed up the hill into the old city. Only photos( not included) could describe the utter exhausting picturesqueness of that place. One more view of house piled on house with shrubs between, window boxes with torrents of red and blue flowers, narrow, mysterious alleys twisting  from shadow into light, sudden views out over the valley, and I will shut myself in the armoire for good.   We would put the camera away, but then… “OH, look at That!”

            The songbirds here are divine too. This noon we were sitting out on the Stone Bench eating our paella from the market. The sun was in and out, a cool breeze. We each had our favorite wine and were commenting on how the birds were quieter in the midi du jour, when one started up in the oaks just below us. The oaks here are a little stumpy and  have dark and angular trunks.  (See Courbet) The leaves are tiny and in tight clusters so any birds are really hidden. We heard a thrush maybe?  He would sing one line- 2 seconds- of burbles and whistles and little filigree turns. Then he would be quiet for 4-6 seconds, and then sing another, different line. He went on and on all through lunch.  Other birds would be making little peeps and beeps and chitters, but he knew he was the main event. This is no catbird, there is not that bratty whine that they have. There seem to be a number of birds with varied liquid songs. I saw one this morning with a long tail. Brown Thrasher, maybe? Boris says we may be hearing Rossingols (nightingales). In the evenings and mornings, they really go all out, a competition, maybe? Une Guerre du Joyeuse, peut etre? Thomas Hardy talked of “an aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, of blast be-ruffled plume, (who’d) chosen thus to fling his soul upon the gathering gloom.” Exactly!   But more likely fighting over property rights.

            Other animals. The night we arrived JP found a little hedgehog face down in the pool. He was one of two babies people had seen here, about the size of a grapefruit with tiny feet and a real boar’s snout in miniature. JP buried him on the crest of the hill beneath an evergreen tree. We saw another one crossing the road on his little feet with a kind of guinea hen quick stride. When JP went to persuade him to move out of danger, he curled up in a ball and rolled off.  Carol, you’d adore him.  There are also butterflies of black and white and one variety of a heavenly blue.  We’ve seen an enormous beetle such as Albrecht Durer painted and billions of tiny grasshoppers littering the roads. I hope they are not waiting for some crop to mature.  

JP's Post for 06.10.2011

JP Post for 06.10.2011

About Setting Up for Plein Air Oil Painting in Foreign Parts.

TSA confiscated my painting mediums in Boston so identify sources where you are going. I found 123 Coulours in Toulouse. Getting there from the airport in a rented car was a white-knuckle adventure in itself.  YOU WILL TAKE A TAXI NEXT TIME. The oil in paint in tubes was OK and has flown cross-country as well.  I now pack MSDS sheets with the paints. The easel is a Julian half box from Utrecht Arts, designed by a French artist while he was a prisoner of war. It fits in my large suitcase with room for my tube paints in a separate plastic box, an ArtBin, leaving room for a few socks and shirts. Small plastic jars are for medium and thinner. The tin with lid is 8” x 3” x 1” deep and lined with Canson disposable palette.  I hold the lid in my hand as a working palette to mix the paint.  I am looking for something larger. When it is time to go simply put on the lid stuff it in your backpack. The small dabs of tube paint seem sufficient to get me through a day, though I am a slow, cautious painter building up thin layers, hanging on to the under drawing, leaving the impasto to the final yahoo-go-for-it stage. The tin can be put in the freezer over night to extend the open life of the paint. I will carry a about five tubes of  the more heavily used paints, for me burnt umber, raw and burnt sienna, flake white replacement, cobalt blue, French ultramarine. In the future, for travel, I will carry smaller tubes for travel. The weight and bulk add up.

 Oh, and one last thing, whatever you do, do not forget to have the leggy lady in the sunny alfalfa behind you reading a P.D. James mystery novel.

JP

Betsy's Post for 06.10.2011

Betsy’s Dispatch 4 Ventredi  06-10-2011

The Great Hall Artist's Residence and Betsy Buying Cheeze at a Rolling Cheeze Market Next to Social Center, Las Cabannes

            We spent hours at the Centre Social plugged into their computer connection and got to download all the emails for the last week. Merci beaucoup to each one of you for all your support and interest. It is gratifying to see how many people are checking in with us.  We love your comments even from those who want to murder us in our bed for our undeserved luck.

When we left the Centre, we found the Wednesday market winding down. There were bread  and cakes and cookies under a bright red awning, and 2 slick white trucks whose sides opened up into beautiful glass shelves, one of cheese (shown) and one of meat.  These people definitely know how to live.

            Some information you might be interested in. Our patron, Charles wrote that some of the best wine around is from Chateau Bourguet, a stone’s throw up the road and that the Dutch woman at the farm we see from here on the other side, makes great cheese and speaks English. As he said, it is nice to see the grapevines we are drinking from and the cows whose cheese we are eating.  We stopped at the winery last night and went through tasting  a number of years before picking out 2 bottles of  tasty 2007 rouge receiver of 2 medals, then we tried the Rose with 4 medals. Ay Carambas! Que Bueno!!  2 more bottles of that. Christine says that the cheese maker is none other than the Ferme Bio I pass every day on my walk. Tomorrow I’ll try to rouse someone, pay them for all the cherries I’ve been snitching toute les jours and get some cheese.  Later:  I just met her. They only sell cheese at the Saturday market in Cordes. She won’t take $$ for the cherries, but I have some pottery waves one of which is wild cherry and will leave one with her and continue snitching…

                        Charles also said this place predates the 1222 walled city of Cordes Sur Ciel. There is a column supporting a beam under the apartment we’re in that dates back to Roman times. The rest of the place is more modern… Evidently service in the Roman army was for 20 years. And a very common practice was that retiring soldiers were given land in occupied areas as their pension.  He thinks this might well have been one of those retirement places granted to a Roman Centurion some time 2000 years ago, we’re guessing. It is thrilling to touch that very simple column. The Visigoths followed them. In the Middle Ages this was a feudal lord’s house, 1100AD or so. We had thought this mighty room (photo) now the studio, might have once been a barn, but it was a manor house at one time, a school some other time. It is 52’long, 17’ wide and 16’high, 20’ at the end peaks.  Eleanor of Aquitaine was due west of here by the Atlantic, Henry II, Richard Lionheart! Hannibal to the south east of us, Richelieu came down here to suppress religious revolt, Neanderthals everywhere, people painting in caves a little northwest of here. HOLY SMOKES! The head spins.  We sit with our wine and look out across the valley and wonder when the last time was that people watched this direction fearing some group showing up to kill them. I think the inquisition started in this general area too, to say nothing of Matisse and the Fauvists down on the coast just before you get to Spain. 

Picture of truck with open side showing cheese. And the Great Hall.

Great Hall 52’ by 17’ walls16’ walls with 20’ peak.

06-08-2011 JP's Post

JP Post for 06-08.2011

Monet had Hay Stacks, JP Paints Bales
Under drawing completed - first acrylic brush & wash, then burnt umber and painting medium brushed in. On Ampersand Gesso Board. easy to carry lots of these in a suitcase.

I think Monet would have loved these great round shapes as much as his hay stacks.

This field is on the opposite rim of the great bowl from our artists’ villa. There is purple alfalfa across the narrow road at my back with the low hum of working bees and a frieze of black and white cows.  A red fox with a healthy brush (tail) lopes across the middle ground. Quiet, except for song birds and crickets and the “screee” of a high wheeling hawk under the opalescent clouds and the occasional passing tractor or truck with waving amused farm people. I must be quite an absurd and anachronistic sight hunched over my box easel. It is so very familiar. We have seen it in great French and Flemish painting: Breughel, Rubens, Monet, Corot, and Van Gogh.   My first job was on the Barney’s Joy Farm helping Mr. Silvia with chores, bucking hay bales, milking the cow at day’s end my tired head against her great round belly.

JP

06-08-11 Betsy's Post

Betsy’s Dispatch 3  Lundi   06-07-11

Every day while JP is creative, I walk around the perimeter of the bowl in which our chateau is the conductor on a raised podium and all the rest is a huge orchestra on curving risers.  It is in excess of 9200 steps, which I figure is 18,000 feet which is about 3.5 miles. For all but a quarter of a mile, it is either very up or very down.  The  picture above is from the height of the back riser looking down into the valley at a Ferme Biologique  (Organic Farm, we’re guessing) and across at our Chateau.  My walk continues along the ridge this picture is taken from, right past where JP is painting and down into the bowl on a steep, skinny but public road between the house and barn of that farm, along by the greenhouses where there is a very full fruited cherry tree, to the base of the Chateau hill. I’ve seen one man working on a tractor a couple of times and heard women in the greenhouses today, but mostly it is a quiet empty landscape. Then I leave the road and cut up on a path along that ridge of trees to home.  Along the way, I pass a sign “Danger! Vipers” with a cute drawing of a snake. (Not poisonous, we’re told). The other leg of the walk is on highway D91, out of sight in this photo, back up past a big winery, fields of wheat or sunflowers, up to the top of the ridge and the beautiful village of Tonnac with its church and bell tower, and back to D 33 again. JP is set up across the road from a huge field of pink alfalfa, I think.

Every day we eat bread, saucisson , olives, fresh tomatoes, cheese and WINE. Or we boil up a pot of new potatoes and make potato salad.  We polished off the last of that  lemonade bottle full I got at the St. Antonin market. Tasted good by the end. Au Revoir!     Betsy

JP Dispatch 06.06.2011

Small sketch completed.  Vista from artists residence.

Betsy's Dispatch for 06.06.2011

Betsy’s Dispatch 2  Dimanche  6-05-2011

View of village where we are from neighboring vineyard

            This morning JP went to his painting and I went, forgetting the camera,worse luck, to St Antonin-Noble-Val to their weekly market. It is yet another blow-your-mind medieval walled town but this time on the banks of the Aveyron river, a sleepy green waterway with overhanging trees and red/orange canoes for rent just waiting for a painter to come sauntering along. The streets, alleys really, meander up into the main church square where there were tables set up for business. I was there by 9:00, and a good thing too.  Yum! There were tables of clean neatly set out veggies, fruit ( I bought a euro of cherries, each one ripened to perfection). There were also cherries that were pinky yellow. Those are the kind that are growing right here. I thought they were just unripe. Mais Non! Tables of sausage, most the size of linguica back home. Quelle odeur! One table had a special of 6 for 10Euros. OUI! One has truffles, I think. One is of boar.  One is “naturel”. Who knows? (They are yummy), I didn’t see as many tables of cheeses.  There was one long long table with little penny paper bags filled with herbs and spices and other green and mysterious things. Leaves? Magic potions? What an aroma there! In the center of town, with unerring Powel taste, I found a fellow selling wine for a euro a bucket. He had a funnel and was filling what looked like gallon plastic square containers made for gas?(illegal) or liquid soap? for 6 euros. I opted for a leftover 2 liter plastic lemonade bottle. He filled it TO THE TIPPY TIPPY TOP for 3E. It isn’t very good, but it will get better.  There was lots more, of course, clothes, jewelry etc.   And at the center was a fellow playing on an antique piano everything from Bach, to Moonlight Sonata to the Maple Leaf Rag. Basically I left because I couldn’t find a bathroom and didn’t want to act out a question. (Forgot phrase book and dictionary). Of course the drive was beautiful. On one side was the river, hidden, on the other were tall sandstone cliffs. Everything that is not alive here, or man made, is some form of limestone. Lunch of all the good things I bought and my crummy wine (so close to yummy). JP is right here painting on the 26’long table in the beautiful 46’ by 14’ studio that looks like the Cloisters. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and it is time to go read something by Dan Brown and soak up some rays.  Au Revoir!  Demain piu de peinture de JP. This place is bliss incarnate.

Beginning The Painting - Under Drawing

Under drawing - vista of fields, in foreground Christine the caretaker and artist minder, Pimpa, her little terrier and her five chickens.  

JP Gets to Painting - On the Bench Overlooking the Vista

We Arrive and Jaws Drop

 

Daily Journal

June 2011 by Betsy 

ARRIVAL:

Turn the corner into the walled city of Cordes sur Ciel  and there it is on the damn top of the hill looking all 13^th century and all. It was built in 1222. We saw Van Gogh’s greenyyellow everywhere. I think it is unripe oats.  The ripe wheat is silver. The turned earth is like smooth milk chocolate.  The houses are all appropriate. They have brown, tan walls and old red roofs. And they nestle.  There are no billboards. The roads are not king here. They just run along the shape of the earth and don’t make much of themselves. It is very very very tres beau beautiful everywhere you look.    Roads are not wider than 20 feet and there are few guard rails.  There also don’t seem to be huge electrical transmission lines. The views are all open fields lined with trees. We have so much to learn from how they treasure their land and don’t put up with the ugliness we take for granted.  We bought wine and cheese and bread and sausage and got here around 8 where Christine welcomed us.  We had supper sitting on the wood bench outside looking at the view pictured, then bed.  The big bird with black and white is a magpie, says JP.   I’ll write about  Day 1 after supper.

Vee aire rgready to ze epairrrt mon cheri!

Vee aire rgready to zeepairrrt mon cheri!

 

Betsy and I got a sneak preview of the Dedee Shattuck Gallery

Off to France tomorrow so Betsy and I got a sneak preview of the Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA, opening July 4. Probably the best designed gallery I have seen. Dedee's unerring instincts for interiors are expressed. Do not miss. I am proud to show among the best of local artists. Click here for link to website. By the way, never pass up the chance to hug a handsome lady.

Dedee and JP with JP painting in her gallery.

Ink Brush, Pen & Ink Sketch of Crowd of People Going Somewhere

For those who are interested in technique, this illustrates fountain pen & ink, ink brush ( #2 WN Cotman III), Noodler's Ink sketch technique in a Moleskine water color sketchbook. I always wear cargo pants or shorts with ample pockets so that all materisls for sketching are always available.