I thought back to this because of some photos Heather sent me today from Carqueiranne. I'm so glad she and her husband got there and also had moules-frites at Le Clapotis on the port. This has become the first thing we do when we arrive in Carqueiranne. And then I realized that the apartment we had in 2002 and 2003 is in the background of this photo she sent! We were on the top floor and had a view of the port and its goings on. My first painting was inspired by seeing a fisherman coming in when I was looking out the window.
* This is what I wrote at the time.
Feb 12, 2002
I was curled up at the window in my favourite perch and noticed a fisherman coming in so went out to see what he had caught. Not a whole lot but according to the people around here it seemed like a fairly good day. He had been out since 3am and it was now about 10am I guess the fish are depleting around here as well. He hadn’t been out for a while because the Mistral had been blowing. With these small boats I can see why they don’t go out in wind. He had the fish separated into those to fry up and those for bouillabaise. I bought some of the frying fish (some were still moving). They will be part of a still life (well, almost still...) I plan to do and then we’ll have them for dinner.
I wanted to do something special for my first painting here - this will be perfect. A woman who was also buying fish was encouraging me to buy the ones for bouillabaise and to make the soup. When I proferred the excuse of a small kitchen, she admonished me by saying you can do lots of things in a small kitchen...you only need the will to do so! Well, of course, it wouldn't be France if the French weren't telling you off about something....
Feb 17, 2002
I have painted four pictures now and am quite pleased with them. I set up the fish on a white plate with blue trim and the plate on a blue and white striped tablecloth. I thought the pale, shimmery colours of the fish would be a good contrast to the blue and white bold stripes. It was all very dull and not my style at all. I added yellow stripes to the tablecloth - still not enough, then red stripes, no, still not enough colour. The pale fish became red, blue, and yellow (I’m sure there are fish those colours somewhere in the Mediterranean!). Still didn’t quite work so then I got the idea of making the striped tablecloth like a provençale pattern and added lemon and olive branches and sunflowers to it. Now it worked!
My second painting was cypress trees against mountains. I did it very quickly, even threw in some shadows just out of my head - it’s a lot more fun to do light and dark shadows if you just make it up, I’ve discovered. It turned out rather abstract and I quite like it. Since I’m just getting into the painting, having done mainly pencil crayons and felt pens before, I brought mainly cheap paper and thought I’d do a lot of experimenting here - more sketch ideas I’ll rework at home on proper canvasses when I have more space and better materials. It’s turned out to be a very good idea as it’s freeing me up to play around and take chances.
My third painting was some Mimosa branches in a pastis pitcher we picked up at a flea market. We've been collecting lots of pastis items when we see them. These beautiful yellow bloom trees are now out and it’s just wonderful to see them. Mimosa here are in bloom in the winter and we saw forests of them on our drive down from Nice.
My fourth was some old wooden fishing boats from the port that they call pointus (By the way, the fish were fabulous to eat....you can’t beat fresh off the boat)
