The Chapel wouldn't post in the post below.
I would still like to see a closeup of the angles.

Today artist's are not required to know the human form. Ever since that guy Piccaso claimed he did not like art but followed the new opaque flat colors anyway. I don't like the guy, did you see the painting attributed to him called Piccaso's Mother? That's just goes to show how bad it's getting. Not even the sig matched much less the style.

http://paintfox.com/

“Cash only for stamps,” the clerk announced.  (after Blair spent a half hour in line)

Blair waited for the stamps.  50 euros, yikes.

“I WILL put them on,” she continued, “LATER”. 

So we’ll be interested to hear if anyone receives our Christmas card from Italy. (it bears my painting of Bologna at Christmas, and an Italian stamp)

As Blair’s uncle Hy used to say “you don’t make a fuss over change when there’s fifty people behind you in line.”  He used to have a concession at Dodger Stadium in the 1960s.   

This wasn’t our first postal experience here.  The day before, after spending 45 and 30 minutes in line at two different post offices, we learned that not all post offices mail packages to the USA.  “You’ll have to go to San Bartolomeo,” the clerk announced.  Of course, it was closed.

I remarked that no one else in the line had a package.  Mostly the queue-ers were waiting for bank transactions.  In most European countries, there is a bank tied to the postal service.  You wait in line for your weekly 50 euros, or to deposit your check.  No machines here.

It is always interesting to spend time in another country – more than the two week vacation, but to really LIVE in a town, using services, making acquaintances at the café, struggling through an explanation.  Yesterday we found a place to print three posters – just on regular paper, but nonetheless well printed.  We all beamed at the result.

Earlier, we hunted down a portable modem at the WIND store (the Italian telecom).  I even got an English speaking clerk (my Italian learning is S L O W) who told me I could use this device “in the middle of the ocean”.

The town we are staying in has a water-for-five-cents fountain – it hearkens to the day when people used to go to the well.   Christmas carolers sang beneath our window two nights ago.  The church bell ringer practices “Oh come all ye faithful” on the carillon every day at 12:30.

And the package?  Luckily, we are only 45 minutes from France, and we drove to the post office at Menton to mail.  We got a tracing number and a receipt.  No line.   While we were there we picked up a live Christmas tree, almost impossible to find here on the “Riviere dei Fiori” (flower coast).   We made our own  ornaments, and PRESTO:  Merry Christmas.
The tree is 6 feet tall (almost 2 meters) on a table (30"), and still only halfway to the ceiling!

Don: Merry Christmas Laurie & Blair. The weather is beautiful here on Maui.

I’m scouring the vacation rental sites for a winter home in Venice.  I know, it will rain, it could be cold, but I love the idea of painting Venice in the fog.   I am just back from seeing my Dad in Winsted, Connecticut, with 11 inches of snow and freezing temperatures.  Venice might be ok.  But then there's Siracusa, Sicily....  sunshine, the sea, history. 

We had originally hoped to return to Cervo, where we spent the last two weeks in October.  No  response – a lot of people in Italy take a Christmas holiday and our frescoed apartment is likely rented.

I loved the snow in Connecticut and painted a picture from inside my father’s apartment looking out.  It was an extraordinary snow – everyone there said so too.  It was a wet snow which coated the branches of the trees all the way around, and it stuck.  There were  no dingy gray  limbs showing, and the white on white makes the most lovely shadows.   The sky was darker than the earth.

The snow kept me from my shopping rounds on Wednesday – only in America can I buy size 10 shoes and stockings which are long enough.   Paris has this crazy idea that one size fits all and no decent woman would have feet larger than an eight and a half.   They also think I should be skinny, but I guess I don’t have that French woman “je-ne-sais-qua”.  I like to think I have that American love-of-life look.

I had lunch with one of  my marketing gurus, Steve Feldman, at the Venetian Restaurant in Torrington, Connecticut.  We  talked about more ways to sell paintings on line.   I am thinking about letting people take the paintings, off-stretchers, on approval, and return those they don’t want.  There will be a shipping label for returns:  to  and from Paris.   Nothing ventured, nothing gained -- and he’s always steered us right.  We’re alive and prospering.

We had the standard Thanksgiving family get together – my brother-in-law had a fresh turkey from friends who raise them.  It was head and shoulders above our usual grocery store fare.  I made a butternut squash and coconut casserole, creamed peas and onions and bought a couple of dozen oysters to put us in the mood.

I LOVE the US, when I am there.  I speak English and can really connect with friends who share my same vocabulary, not only of words, but of cultural concepts.   But then there's Siracusa.

Don (and Maui, we can put Sicily's weather to shame, 360 days a year. But I love Paris too, and Venice.)

Laurie and Blair Pessemier

Snow in Connecticut  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/panel   11 x 14  28 x 35 cm  150.00
Christmas Rue de Rivoli  Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/ 15 x 21.5"  38 x 55 cm  275.00

I get up at 6 Am too, and get things done I won't do during the day, clean up etc.
Combined age 150. I didn't know you had a sense of humor..
No prices, I'd be scared I was in the wrong place. Blair sounds a lot like me as far as eating goes. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) I have no idea what  risotto, porcini or braciola mean. It must taste good or you wouldn't have ordered it. I would let you order for me.

I really laughed at the pate.
I just found a lot of cyan colored fine lace I was saving for something a long time ago. I moved it and saved it again, I hope I use it someday.

I like what you did with the turnips, and Blair's boats are very advanced, perspective is tricky and architecture takes a long time.
Don

Artnotes: The Thrill (of Italy)
As I sit at my computer posting pictures of our paintings from Italy (30+, go to www.paintfox.com to see them all), I realize the thrill is gone.  Not the thrill for Italy, but the thrill I experienced while I was there.  I just can’t express how differently I felt, how I saw with baby eyes, new forms and colors.   I had a giggly quality as I sipped cappuccino, as I wrote my impressions, and planned the day.   Sunshine might have had something to do with it, and there was a special end of the day light that could just make my heart soar.

In  Cervo, I recline on my bed examining the frescos on our 18 foot tall ceiling.  There were layers of murals on the walls, one marvelous image leading into another.  I would think, why is it nobody wants  frescoes today?    I mean, if you could have anything in your house, why wouldn’t it be a fantastic scene on the ceiling?  Why wouldn’t you have the roof 5 meters above?   The most recent ceiling fresco I am aware of is one Matisse did in his own house.  Blair and I tried to paint one once in Seattle, when we were first married, but it was clear we couldn’t work on the same page. 

But when I think of these experiences, these stories, here in Paris, they fall flat.   We had a deliriously WONDERFUL time that I can’t even give an inkling of.  But take heart, I believe we are going back in January/February.   Really, where better than to sell those Italian images but in the place they were painted?  Our hostess has offered to present our work to the town for a show later in the year.

While there, we went to the local exhibition space.  They were having a holy card show, just tto remind us Italy is a Roman Catholic country.  Blair and I were inspired to make Christmas cards, which will be ever so Italian this year.

If I had to describe Italy in a word, I think it would be drama.  There is drama in everything. My experience at the library (no internet, and little coverage, sadly); driving in the car (our speed increased twofold at the other end of the France/Italy tunnel – and don’t even think of trying to get ahead).   Sitting at the beauty parlor, my hairdresser’s  friend came in and told a story of her own mistaken identity (I am not completely null in Italian, just sort of) with such flourish, such glamour, such waving of hands and body, I might as well have been at the opera.   If you ever want to get a bead on things, go to the hairdresser.

We went to Portofino, Rapallo, Genoa --  all great.  Italy is SO very different from France – not so many “historic” or “artistic” attractions, but a sense that Caesar might have lost a sandal buckle right where you are walking.   Or Hannibal,  Leonardo da Vinci, or Christopher Columbus – or just Blair and Laurie and Harika.

When we lived at 28, rue d’Assas in Paris, we had a young friend (about 9 at the time) who always wanted to come over and sit in our “cozy sofa”.  It was a loveseat, made by DesignAmerica, of a streamline style from the 30s.   E loved our cozy sofa, and I had a little knitting machine she would sit there with, by the hours.  She was a trifle discombobulated at the time, born in America, lived in Glasgow, then London, now Paris all within the span of her short life.
   We have no comfortable furniture now.  We have two exotic “pasha” chairs upholstered in flying carpets, a large Louis XV bergere in white linen, a fuzzy pink boudoir chair,  and a half dozen dining chairs which fight for discomfort at the table.
   Like Eliza Dolittle, all I want is a room somewhere far away from the cold night air with one enormous chair, or do I?
   My mother took her place in her one enormous chair when she retired and sat there until she died of Alzheimers.  This followed in the steps of my aunt, who did the same thing two years earlier.  Was it the chair?  Did all that comfort make her lose her edge?  Probably not, but I am not sure I am going to get a comfy chair anytime soon.  Comfy chair in moderation.  My father, perhaps thinking the same way as I do, resists sitting in his comfy chair.  He’s 87.
   We’ve been out all the days this week, painting:  the usual spots by the river and in the gardens, but also we made a jaunt to Chantilly where we sketched horses in dressage.  Yesterday we were at Auvers sur Oise, where we (not so successfully) tried to channel Vincent Van Gogh. 
   I feel dog tired (to coin Harika’s term) after some of these outings, but often it is good-tired.  Tons of fresh air make rosy cheeks.  I think about things like the comfy chair (and, no doubt, Eliza Dolittle needed it – I don’t plan on selling violets anytime soon), and its effect.  We visit with people on the street – “why are only foreigners visiting this place (Auvers)”, a middle-aged American tourist asks.  All young French see this on field trips, I think.  But I tell him,  “Because we can get out and  APPRECIATE IT.  We make it possible.”
   

Artnotes:   The Week in Paris
Laurie 1, Putti Planter  Luxembourg Gardens  Laurie Fox Pessemier  18 x 15" 46 x 38 cm Acrylic/linen  275.00

This week, we painted along the Seine, in the Tuileries Gardens, in the Luxembourg Gardens, at the Bois de Boulogne, the parc Bagatelle and at Giverny.  Not to mention we hung a new art show of our work at the Petit Lux (one of this week’s paintings graces the poster).   

Workshop painters this week came from New Zealand, Chicago and North Carolina.  All were good painters, fully enjoying their time at the easel.  I am lucky to finally paint for a living, and kind of wish I had made the shift earlier in life.   Go to art school (or not), be an artist!!!  Follow your calling:   it will make your life most happy. 

We took our Giverny car a day early, to go out to the Bois de Boulogne, in comfort.  People are always impressed at the size and extent of the woods.  There were still roses blooming in the Bagatelle, some quite fragrant.  I sat on the grass and painted the house in the distance, after a morning near the boats.

The boat , our Monet Bateau-Atelier, is floating along. We have an American builder interested in it, and have some funding ideas.  We’d make an ideal advertisement for Marine Insurance or Marine paint.

Along the banks of the Seine, people stopped to talk to all of us.  Americans, mostly.  I gave out cards, and encouraged people to pull up an easel.  A  little French girl sat silently, watching one of our painters for nearly a half hour.  People on the street, in the parks, are thrilled to watch the magic of painting.

We have wonderful conversations with our fellow painters.   Rarely do they touch on politics or religion, (things we were told never to talk about, as the gentle woman in the back seat of the car points out) but  relate happy stories from our lives, or the foibles of travel.  Painters relax.

We lunched together somedays:  crepes on rue Servandoni, local food at the Café Assignat near the Seine (steak tartare!), and at the fancy restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne.  One woman talked about how she made swan sausage in New Zealand.   I had seen a recipe for swan in an old English cookbook, I never knew anyone who ate it.  ‘Black swans”, she told us. 

As we drove around the Arc de Triumph, the couple in the back of our car recounted a tale about how a cab dropped them off in the center of the roundabout, at the Arch itself.   They found themselves “stuck” there – cabs refusing to stop, and our friend couldn’t get down the stairs with her walker.  Finally, a policemen on duty blew his whistle, pulled over a cab. The driver stopped with a look of dread on his face.  The policeman then ordered him to ferry our friends home.   Ah, Paris!

Laurie and Blair Pessemier