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

Friends in need

I hardly know how to use this site any more, but I am going to give it a try. I would like to re

design it, so I think I might be asking my friend Kristi Espinasse of French word a Day to help me with it. We had been talking about what to say to a friend, a dear one, a member of family when they tell you they have cancer. My immediate thought, response was, there are no words no words at all. All sentiments however seem so empty and meaningless in face of such a cruel disease. My only words that come to mind are 'I am here if you need me and I'll do anything I can to help.'

But of course there are words, words of understanding, words of comfort, words of friendship, of care and love.

Just being there holding someones hand, doing their cooking, doing their laundry, taking them flowers and listening.

I have had the tendancy to be a bit too bossy with my family and friends who have suffered from cancer, trying to persuade my sister to drink disgusting raw fruit and vegetable smoothies with wheat grass and all those things they say will help. But in the end it is up to the individual how they decide to choose their treatment and their diet. I think being a good friend is just being there.

It feels odd to write about something as cruel as cancer. I try to avoid writing about anything that is in anyway hard to write about. I avoid politics, war, cruelty to animals and children, the enviroment and on and on. But when Krisit asked me to share my thoughts, I thought I would.

In the end there is only Love. And all my dear ones who have either died or survived cancer have had the most extra-ordinary bravery, spirituality, calmness, filled with such love they have often been the comforters rather than the comforted.

And to all of you who are sufferring from cancer or know someone with cancer my heart goes out to you and your loved ones.

Ha ha 2016

Well well, it is now 2016, funny thing that. I remember when I was 10 years old sitting in the class room and my teacher Mrs. Chadwick talking about the year 2000 and I thought oh well thats alright I don't have to think about the year 2000 I'll be well over 40 by then so old I'll be dead. Well how wrong I was, now I am well over 50 almost 60 and alive and kicking... but not skiing.

We went to the Alpes de Haute Savoie,  Les Trois Vallees, so there we were in Meribel me cooking for some clients and David trying to find some snow to ski on. He did find some right up high, luckily for me there wasn't much snow or ice so catering was easy. I wasn't sliding around on the road with my Roast Turkeys.

I cooked on Christmas day so David, Alison and I had our Christmas Day on Boxing day.

My beautiful friend cooking up a storm.

Our Christmas Day lunch table

My Pal and me

My David and me.

Very beautiful mountains and no me.

The start of our journey had a huge hiccup. We were having a big Christmas bash here on the 20th of December and were leaving the falling morning to drop Thomas our dog off with some friends. Only a three hour drive away, so not quite around the corner.. I had been very organised and done a lot of the shopping here for my catering gig in the mountains, I wanted to make certain that I had everything that I needed for a Mezze night, Lebanese, Moroccan, Spanish, Provencale.. then of course the traditional Christmas Fayre to be followed a few nights later by an Asian dinner, mostly chinese with Japanese to start and a Thai flavoured Salad, So I did not want to find myself with out any of the ingredients I needed.

We left a bit late and arrived at our friends house around 6 pm.  Once we had said our hellos and the doggies had sniffed, wagged and woofed, I asked if I could put the frozen things in their freezer. Well I searched and I searched and could not find the bag. In fact I searched and searched and wasn't sure if I could find any of the bags. David was in charge of packing the car and I was in charge of packing everything else.

In front of our hosts I started to have a bit of a hissy fit, first the steam started gently out of my mouth, then started pouring almost hooting out of my ears then more came pouring out of my mouth, David was being put to shame in no uncertain terms. Ooh la la, what a worry. So I phoned our friends in Tour Tour and Peter said he would drive down check out for the bag of frozen prawns and put them in the freezer for me...I started to simmer down, the steam was becoming mist that would scald as it left my tongue. Then Peter phoned back, all my 7 bags packed with food were still there waiting to be put into a car boot....I was becoming panicked..I had organised everything down to the last detail but I had planned for any kind of mishap.

I thought I should drive straight home and back again, my train of thought was neither logical or clear. Peter said he would put all the food away and this why not drive back in the morning rather than the middle of the night. Very sensible and thank goodness for once in my life I listened to sense. I also decided magnanimously to forgive David, after all I should have checked the boot and we had been so busy leading unto leaving our brains were not working too well. 

So we drove home in the morning, picked up my shopping and then did the long drive to Meribel 12 hours almost non stop driving and then I was working the next day all day..Not the way I want to start my working week. But it was all good and all ended well.

We came home with out a hitch on 31st December and had a very quiet New Years Eve and pretty quiet New Years day but we did go to see our dear friend Janet and family, played charades and did some pretty good belly laughing. It is Sunday 3rd now and time to get serious.

Websites, advertising, paint-provencing, gardening, painting, and I am teaching my first art class of the year on Thursday 7th. I am looking forward to it.

I shall be back to blogging on my other website s and in the meantime I wish you all a prosperous and wonderful New Year even though I may be a few days late!!!

 

It's been a long time

So it has been a very long long time since I wrote on this blog. Painters, poets and puddings. I keep thinking I will give it up after all I only seem to write one post per year. But this evening I was walking Thomas through the woods and all these thoughts, insignificant meanderings of the mind, floated through, some stayed and some wafted away. I have an art blog, I have three websites, one for my art,one for my painting trips in provence and last but not least my cooking website so as you can tell I am pretty busy. I still need to update my websites. In fact I have so much to do I am endlessly running around in circles never able to catch up.

Going back to my walk and the sunset and the beauty all around me, I thought I just want a place where I can waffle, and tell little stories and this site this Painters, Poets and Puddings is just such a comfy place to sit and write on a winters evening by the fire. Thomas is stretched out sleeping after his walk and I have an evening of ironing in front of me, what a lucky woman I am.

So after all that I am keeping this blog for just a while longer and Valerie if you are perchance reading this. I went to the Grand Hotel Cap Ferret and they are very interested, or keen that I work with them and teach art classes there for their guests. We are going to meet up again towards the end of January. I am going to give a few of them an art class so they can tell their guests what a lesson is like with Tess. there is talk of putting me on their website and having the press along. I am so excited!!!!! I would be so happy if it works. Thank you Valerie.

 

a bientôt

Saturday watercolour days

The first of my Saturday water colour days went very well, and how could it not with such lovely people here. Ruby, John, Bluebelle, Edison and Anne. The sun was generous in her giving, the blossom abundant and fragrant. Master pieces by all. We have two more Saturdays in April one on the 18th and the next on the 25th. The next ones will most likely be in the last two weeks of June.

If you are interested in coming on any of the Saturday courses email me

@[email protected]

If you are interested in joining me on any of my Painting in Provence trips please go to my website www.paint-provence.com

I am still working on the website and still need to do a lot of marketing but the trips are being booked up quite quickly which is really fabulous.

More to come

 

My recent paintings

So this little painting is called Brave Space and is 140 cm x 300 cm and was commissioned by a friend of mine for his amazing home, he also commissioned two more shown below.

This little one is called Burnt Orange Autumn and is 60cm x 180cm it looks really lovely in real life

This is Opio Ice 2 and is 100 x 100 with 22 carat gold leaf, moon gold and white gold, actually Burnt Orange autumn has a load of gold on it too.

Sunny Sunday

The almond blossom, japonica and mimosa are all shimmering in the sunshine today,

a quick little water colour seemed just the right thing to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I am starting up painting courses in provence please visit my site Paint-Provence.com

To see more of my art please visit tessabakerart.com

I thought I would write a blog tomorrow about preserved lemons for and art.

Tread Softly

Australia 2004, sadly the last time I was in Australia

My older sister Candy lived in a pretty place on the beach called Wagstaff, she and her then husband Robert Drewe very kindly rented a little bungalow for me in the middle of an Eucalyptus Autumn, my paints knew little peace. I was in heaven, I wish I could afford Candy the same sort of generosity now. Who knows one day and who knows one day I will go back to Oz, I love it there.

I was travelling by train to see my younger sister Charlie in Sydney, feeling full of love and contentment, the train journey was a quiet pleasure.  Passing through the forests I was taken by a moment of melancholic happiness. I penned a little poem that I thought was not that good and felt strangely familiar. But still quite pleased with myself I published it in one of my early blogs on this site. Today I was sifting through old menus and came across the blog page, of course now I realise where my inspiration came from. A poem that touches my heart profoundly and that my Dad read at our wedding.

'He wishes for the cloths of Heaven' W.B.Yates

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Unwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Not nearly as beautiful, but I am still putting it in, because my blog is called Painters,Poets and Puddings, so I am putting a poem in.

Fern and forest

Forest and fern

Tread softly

on the deadened leaves and learn

Tread softly in the strands of time

where nature meets body

and body meets mind

tread softly in transcendence

flow into a rhythmic cadence

Echoes of loved ones dance in the breeze

whispering through the eucalyptus trees

Tread softly on life's fine web of hope

Love gently in this dream divine

and in this dream our webs entwine.

 

Then of course there is the movie that my dad made with Diana Dors called Tread Softly Stranger, so I guess I am not the only one who rather likes using tread softly. I wish I could remember to tread softly when I am cross and stamping my feet at David to do something NOW.

 

 

Eucalyptus bark before it turns gold,orange,blue,red and green in it Eucalyptus Autumn. Candy thank you for the memories.

Blogs websites and very wet weather

Well it is quite an age since I have written on this friendly little orange blog. I always think I am too busy and that maybe I don't have the time to be silly or trivial or anything similar that I rather enjoy. I love to be silly, so here I am again. I was speaking to my dear friend Kristi author and blogger supreme and she said 'Oh no don't give up your blog' So I have been thinking and I was going to start another blog with Word Press, clean slate and all that, but I loathe using wordpress it is far too complicated for my simple mine. So I am going to keep my painters,poets and puddings, because that sums me up pretty well. My poetry is fairly appalling but I love it, and I have just bought the Penguin Rhyming Dictionary and a huge version of Roget's Thesaurus, so I might even learn something along the way. I am a chef and I am an artist so I will attach this orange blog to my new websites that are in the process of being created by me and with a lot of help Alice a friend and great web designer.  Anyway it was me dear old dad who thought of Painters, Poets and Puddings for me as a title for my blog, so I do have sentimental attachments to it.

I would love this blog to be a chatty chatty site, full of arty art and food food, so if you have anything you want to send me, I shall put it up here.  I have been so inspired by my niece Rosie It would be great if I am not the only contributing artist to this site, and just to give you one more link, my eldest sister Candy is producing a fabulous on line magazine called VerandahMagazine.com.au so lots of creativity in the air.

I am working towards my painting trip holidays in Provence. I won't put the link in until I have done the website, that would be a waste of time now. I am also paintin a 3 meter by 140 meter painting which is huge fun. My Tessaskitchen site is up and running and that wouldn't be there without my wonderful sister Sarah's help.

It is pouring with rain outside and David has just gone to pick Jack up from the airport, they are off to the mountains to ski, and they are staying in Neffertitti, my old Renault Traffic Camper van who has now reached the right old age of 30. She is a little tattered and torn, and Jack is now a big lad, so I am not quite sure if they will fit in there together. Jolly glad I am not with them. Its raining here so it is sure to be snowing in the mountains. Snowing and cold, and I don't like skiing down hill very much so I am even more happy to be here writing nonsense in front of a cosy fire.

Oh yes the Japonica is out, and I can't wait for a warm afternoon so I can take out my watercolours and paint the Japonica and the Almonds blossom which is ready to burst bright and happy all the way around the house. Yippeeeeeeeee, Happy days, spring is coming, the warmth will be coming and with that even greater happiness than I have now.

Sunny California

The beautiful ocean, only a three minute drive from where I am staying. I have been in California for 10 days now, and for all this time I have been sick in bed. I thought I would venture out for a short walk yesterday with my lovely new camera, but was totally wiped out by the time I got back. I must say I was very happy to find this place just round the corner. 

The ocean made me think of the waves on Bondi and how much fun it was trying to catch them body surfing, and how I would not do it now, not in this ocean, in this sea, where I would be tossed and turned and left out to dry on the rocks. That did happen at Bondi most embarressing as well. The waves turned me round and around, removed my costume and spat me out sprawling on the beach, then just for good measure a few moments later, it spat my swimming costume out beside me.

I am looking foward to being better and for seeing more magnifecent mercurial waves. I shall take my paints next time.

Must say though, a great place for practicing Mindfullness.

Hopefully I will write soon, you never know.

ART EXHIBITION