Poets, painters and puddings. These three things make the world as it ought to be.

The garden shed

I was staying at a friends house in the Alpes Maritime and in her delightful garden is a delapitated shed, you can almost see it breathing, my friend tied a rope around it and attached it to the smoking tree, which leans heavy with it's burden and gravity is pulling the shed down down down to the valley below. So I thought I would paint it before it dissapears.

The in laws have gone and we are left gasping for air, it is as if we have been hurled about the centre or a tornado for three weeks and then dumped ungraciously in a massive pile of mess and debris, now the storm is over and the sister has left, I am torn and week and not sure how to put myself together again. We are going to Berlin for my 50th and I am so full of pain and tiredness I do hope I enjoy it. Up until a few days ago I was excited about my birthday, but now I have been sucked dry, all I want to do is hide in a hole and sleep. OOOH la la la la.

Walking by the Sea at Midnight

I have just completed this tryptich, and I feel quite happy today as I sold two large paintings and one smaller painting last night, and I feel a bit more positive about my work. I have rearranged my DIARY OF AN ARTIST Blog into two Catergories, oil paintings and watercolours and have finally marked which ones are sold and which ones are for sale.

My exhibition in Nice is now definatley the 11th to the 25th October and I have been asked to exhibit again at a Gallery in London which is part of a fantastic theatre in Kilburn called the Tricycle Theatre, which often puts on very challenging productions. That will be next Autumn in London, so I pray for a few more and loads more sales, because this is all I really want to do in life.

My Favourite Place

This is where I paint, I am not sure why I love the front quite so much. Since I bought the cheapest sunshade I could buy,  which at the shop was called a Tonelle Vague, the vague means wave I am not sure what the Tonelle means, but I love saying Tonelle vague, it sounds quite important, and to me it is, this wave of a sunshade has envoked so much romance in my heart that when I sit in one of the whicker chairs and look out dreamily across the field I feel love and contentment, I cannot wait for the second Tonelle Vague to go up on the otherside of the Yukka tree, it will be romance heaven.

I am completeing quite a few paintings and messing quite a few others up, bacly may I add, I have gone past the pain barrier and raced ahead into a messy gooey sludge of paint and several ruined paintings. Oh well, at least I am trying to improve. What I am having difficulty, coming to terms with, is the fact that I am not writing about cookery, not about menues, I am not continuing with my voyage on the boat, and how the Galapogos ended, and what went on from there, not about the menues I cooked, or the giant tortoises who allowed us to swim with them in the mangroves, not about the hundreds of seals with layed down with and played with on the beaches, not about the Blue footed booby birds who are so tame would just come and land on our heads or arms, or anywhere they felt like really, does it matter that I am not consistent. I could I be rpoud of myself and say I am consistently unconistant.

Soft around the edges or just a bohemian

This image looks so tiny, I hope it comes out a bit larger on the post. I have been trying for hours to get rid of the rather nasty chequered border that my paint shop was deciding all my pictures should have, I am finally rid of it, hopefully for good. I shall put some more new paintings on to my Diary of an Artist's page.So am I soft around the edges or just a Bohemian, well I rather think that I am soft around the edges. Some lovley friends of mine came to Dinner and Richard, who is a wonderful painter and my erstwhile Mentor, said how happy I seemed to be living this bohemian lifestyle, I asked him what he meant, as I dug my potatoes up in flip flops and a long evening dress, albeit cotton. He said living eccentrically slightly cut off from the rest of the world. So I looked it up in the dictionary: An artist or writer who lives an unconventional lifestyle, well I guess he is right.

Not only but also, I had my dear friend Kristi Espinasse staying for the weekend, David was in England with his boy and it was so nice having a woman friend to stay and do the girlie things that one cannot exactly do with a bloke, like try on dresses and giggle over very silly things, and have long deep and meaningful conversations about life and its emotions and its ups and downs and its fears. Well some blokes can and some blokes can't. Everything always seems to come back to fear in my case, and life is really about discovery, and if we don't take risks, which means working through our fear barriers how can we possibly discover. I retreated into a shell a while back, so much so that I had numbed myself into beleiving that it was the best thing possible for me, but when Richard came and looked at my paintings, he helped me to realise that I had not pushed them far enough, I had been content that they were pretty and had gone no further, I had avoided the pain barrier, I have to push through the pain barrier if I am ever going to fly.

Turning Heads

                            They not only turn heads, and even make poor Van Gogh turn in his grave at the value put on his sunflower painting, (my least favourite) but they have the most amazing medicinal properties. I planted about 40 sunflowers in my garden, and I don't know if all sunflowers do the same, but mine hold their budding heads towards the sun, and as the petals begin to form they turn their heads away. I will definately be painting a few sunflowers myself, hopefully they won't be as garrish and vulgar as the ones I painted 12 years ago.

So what can these jolly little flowers do for you apart from make you smile when you look at them? They are full of healthy unsaturated fats vitamins and minerals, they keep the cholesterol down, help keep the blood clean and all sorts more. Just go to google and you will find a lot of interesting information. The native Americans not only used sunflower seeds as food, but also the seeds have chemicals that fight rheumatism and releive pain.  Well well well.

And talking of wells, sometimes it is very important to fill the creative well up by doing something jolly and fun, not just the everyday drudge of life. Yesterday, two boys their nanny and I went to Lac de St Cassien for a picnic on a pedalo, swam in the lake, went canoing and all in all had a jolly good time. I came home revitalised and realised that I need to play more, to keep my creative juices flowing. Oh by the way, I just ate a handfull of sunflower seeds. Should I expect a miracle? Not just yet. Something I love to do with sunflower and pumpkin seeds is to dry roast them in a frying pan, into which I put a teaspoon of cumin a teaspoon of curry powder and a sprinkle of salt when the pan is smoking hot, but before the curry is burning I toss in the seeds and sautee them and they start to explode.  They are a wonderful addition to a tasty green salad. A demain   

Break Through and off to New York

Sold to my friends from Cap d'Antibes. I had fun putting the gold on. No time for story telling I still have not packed and I am off to New York first thing. Tara

Tulips In April please click here