Today I'm posting some photos I took of our apartment in Carqueiranne. Question for the day?
Who do you think is having the most fun?

We really enjoyed our little apartment and got a great view of the port (as long as you were sitting down on the couch....). I really enjoyed snuggling up to this porthole like window and watching the activities of the port and the main street. The nautical decorating theme was carried throughout the apartment, right down to the dishes, and it was really quite neat the way they had done it.


Our apartment building in Carqueiranne


View from the livingroom


Painting in my "studio"


Jim preparing his classes


Our Lillipution kitchen equipped with everything including dishwasher, microwave, blender, juicer, foodprocessor, etc.


Livingroom

I’m posting the last of the paintings I did in France today. I don’t feel these ones worked particularly well but I learned a lot from doing them and they helped free me up to experiment and not worry about the result. They were also done before I really started to observe what was around me, During our time in winter the vinyards didn’t have leaves, the lavender wasn’t blooming, and the beach umbrellas weren’t out.


Beach at Carqueiranne


Vinyards in Bandol


Lavender fields

A few odds and sods today. I loved seeing the grape vines in winter without any foliage. You really could notice the twisted and gnarled shapes. What I found surprising is that the ones in Italy weren’t picturesque at all. They seem to have a system of training the vines upward and supporting the branches in a straight line. Not an interesting painting subject at all.


French vinyard in winter


Typical village in France


Cats on a hot tile roof

No real theme in the paintings today, other than France, of course. I so enjoyed our local Thursday morning market. The painting doesn’t quite capture the feel of it, but I did take some video footage which I will post at some point. In the next painting the yellow Renault 4 was the model we rented for our first trip to France in 1972 (it was actually white but that seemed a rather dull colour). Would you believe that we actually slept in the back cargo area (you could push the back seat frontwards) with the hatchback up and our feet sticking out resting on campstools. We spread a shower curtain over our legs to keep the dew off. This was when we couldn’t find a hotel for less than $4 a night.

Notice I’ve put it on the sidewalk as that seems to be a common place to park in France! I’ve also included a round-about a dog, and a palm tree....all very common items in the area we were. Dogs are king and are welcome in restaurants, shops, on buses, trains, etc. The last one is a combination of various old large liner advertisements with a few of my own embellishments. We became members of the small local library in Carqueiranne and I found a book on subject that had lots of these neat old advertisements. I was very attracted to the bold simple graphics.


Thursday morning market in Carqueiranne


Renault 4 on the sidewalk


A complilation of French liner advertisements

This time in France I became very fascinated by the “campanilles”, the wrought iron belltowers (not always housing bells, however) on the tops of churches and other buildings. These didn’t attract my attention in previous trips...perhaps I’ve become more observant since I began the artwork. I also loved the plane trees which were all without leaves in the winter. I had never noticed their multicoloured trunks before!


St. Tropez


Vinon, the Var region


Campanille and plane trees, Cassis


Imaginary campanilles

Vase of flowers from the market

I never realized that oranges and lemons grew in the south of France because I’d never been there in winter before. Their season is around February. We were given some great orange marmalade and lemon wine from a woman called Paule that she had made from her own orange and lemon trees. There were fields and fields of tulips growing. The Carqueiranne area produces tulips which they export all over the world apparently. The stems are like small trees and they last for weeks. Not like our local greenhouse ones that seem to droop after a few days. Lots of other flowers being produced as well.


Orange tree in Paule's garden


Tulip fields in Carqueiranne

Something that really surprised me about my painting in France is that I painted completely different things than I thought I would. I thought I would paint endless shutters, stucco, and old stone walls. I have lots of pictures of that stuff so maybe that will eventually find its way into paintings. I found myself very impressed by the bright colours in various sports activities. We were very close to Almanarre, a famous surfboard and kite-boarding area. We were both quite fascinated by the kite-boarding where the participant flies and flips in the air at really rather amazing heights sometimes. We were very close to a cycling path along the coast (Piste Cyclable du Littoral) as well and so many of the riders were dressed in racing colours. I also was taken by the rows of brightly coloured motorcyles we saw parked everywhere. Being a complete beginner at painting, I was pleased (and surprised!) that I actually got some feeling of movement in the cycling and watersports.


Kite-boarding and sail-boarding at Almanarre


Cyclists in the south of France


Motorcycles in the harbour at St. Tropez

One of the really neat things when travelling out of the summer season is seeing things in nature that you hadn't seen before. When we arrived in January the Mimosa (or Acacia) trees were in full bloom and were just fabulous. The downside is that these trees are so prolific in the area they cause eye infections for a lot of people. And when you add all the burning of slash related to farming and the fact that the French are still smoking like fiends....it's a triple whammy. The Mimosa branch is in one of the many pastis water bottles we collected at flea markets when we were there. We had a lot of fun finding these and pastis is so typical of the area. It also never seems to taste any good outside of the south of France. The flea markets were also great for book browsing and people watching.

Mimosa Branch in Pastis 51 Pitcher

Twisted Pines and Mimosa Trees

Mimosa Trees in Winter

I really loved seeing the old colourful wooden fishing boats that were in every port, even some nestled beside big fancy yachts in places like St. Tropez. I named the open ones after the main characters from Pagnol's Manon des Sources. We saw this film again on French TV when we were there. What a perfect film to see when you're in Provence.


Wooden fishing boats - Port of Sanary


Wooden fishing boats - Port of Giens

My first blog post...wow, more than 14 years ago!

Hello everyone. I'm going to use this space to post my art, photos, quicktime movies, and random scribblings. This is the first painting I did in France. I bought the fish direct from the fisherman just as he came into the port.The fish were excellent to eat and didn't quite look like what the painting turned out to be in the end. I kept wanting to add more colour than was really there. I'm sure there probably are fish this colour somewhere in the Mediterranean...
I've also included a painting I did of the port

Enjoy and send me email with your comments!



Mediterranean rock fish on a provencale tablecloth


Port of Carqueiranne