Wedding anniversary and artistry

A day of sunshine (yeah!!!), light showers (L!!) and art galleries

Following the Gaugin trail through the Bois de L’Amour

Tres appropriate given the day

Littlest goes off piste as per usual

Flowers around here are given the art gallery treatment

After coffee, chocolat-chaud, or ice creams, we wander from one art gallery to another. Littlest trots in – chooses a favourite, waits to show us all which it is and then happily trots back out and on to the next gallery, probably next door. We on the other hand, trot in, choose favourite(s), realise we can’t afford any of them and sadly trot back out again and on to the next gallery, ever hopeful that we might stumble upon an up and coming artist whose work is cheaper. Were we rich of pocket however, I suspect the dilemma might have been more difficult – there were a couple of galleries where it would have been hard to know where to start, such was the quality of the paintings: check out www.belaven.com - very pleasant, genial man, who chatted to the girls in French, wished them luck in exams, understood our lack of funds but appeared to appreciate that we entered his gallery with children who took time to look at his paintings, pointed out the bits they liked and lingered, and incidentally is an artist who paints the most sublime scenes with a remarkably beautiful quality of light.

Anyway, enough plugging of an artist I don’t even know, there are lots of others, of variable quality it must be said, but visiting all their galleries makes for a very enjoyable afternoon.

And it is a pretty place too

To round off a good day, we sat outside, in fading sunshine and celebrated 23 years

Amazing what you can do with a bit of melon, some ham and a nectarine

Comments

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!

Confetti for the brain. A little bit of history regarding a use for holes and a couple of quotes.

Confetti - noun: small pieces of coloured paper thrown over a bride and groom following their marriage ceremony. Also the bane of church yards and wedding venues - who wants to exit church after their favourite spinster aunt's funeral and slip on the papier mâché mush of last weekend's weddings, or step, in your wedding gown, onto a pink spattered step when your colour theme is lilac? Confetti - derived from the Latin confectum, meaning something prepared. Which suggests that there is something missing from the traditional wedding rhyme 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue ... something prepared.' How about something shared ... declared ... or ensnared?? Nature's confetti is all over the ground at this time of year - The garden, footpaths, and pavements are covered in blossom snow. And, when he falls asleep beneath the apple tree, it speckles Four-legged-friend's black coat. The confetti we know today - bits of b

Walking The Dog

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