Vagabond Artist

After two months in Paris I am inaugurating my atelier in honor of my great friends that are coming from Florence and Siena to visit. It should be a big party. Some of the other artists in the old factory are going to have their ateliers open as well. You are welcome to come.

What a great weekend it has been. One of my best friends came for the evening on her way from Florence to New York and then the Chicago artist Tim Anderson came. We went to a fine neighborhood restaurant on rue Saint Jacques called Le Vin Sobre. The food was excellent, the company even better.

Tim is so inspiring. He came up from Munchen Germany where he is having a show at the Bottega. I am also working on a new series large oils of boat paintings like the one on the home page of my new personal site AtELIERFIGè that is part of the collection for Gables Villa Rosa.

For some reason the movable type is not publishing the entry about Tim the way I wrote it so here is the information about Tim Anderson's exhibition in Munich.

He came up from Munchen Germany where he is having a show at the Galerie Florian Walch of a group of works on the Comedia del Arte.

It has been a week in bed. I started feeling a sore throat last Saturday but only realized Monday that I had the flu - la grippe- in French, it sounds so awful.

The flu sounds ephemerous - an unknown thing that comes and goes out of no where and leaves sweat ridden bizarre dreams but in French la grippe is a hideous monster that comes up from behind and clamps onto you shortening your breath and filling your sinuses with goo.

La grippe locks onto you in a judo clamp and makes your muscles sore, makes you hack yourself awake, makes your nose shut completely when you lie down to sleep. Its Grendel.

Today I feel better and even left the house, a short brisk walk around the block in the icy biting northern wind. At the beginning of the week I was disappointed because I had planned to go to the atelier and paint all week but the days weren't wasted.

In and out of bizarre dreamy sleep I updated my website Tuscany-Painting.com adding over 50 new paintings and deleting many old images. It has been well over a year that the paintings had not been changed.

Next week will be exciting because I am going to put several paintings on ebay in collaboration with Mario Cappelletti from Tuscan antiques.

Today I finished changing my website tuscany-painting.com and have put more than 50 new available paintings on line. I worked like a dog for the last ten days. There are ten paintings on auction on EBAY

See the paintings up for bidding

For the last four years I have auctioned off paintings just before Christmas, it is fun to see people bidding.

Finally at 3:30pm I left the apartament to go look for Cafe de la Danse on rue de Temple but the person that had told me it was there was confusing it with Cafe de la Gare next to the Marais danse center. I didn't go in but went over to place des Voges and looked at all the galleries. Nice galleries.

It is so cold today. A short stop at Cafe Hugo for a hot chocolate was just what I needed. With the transportation strikes I walked all the way there and back.

I would love to find a gallery in Paris that would exhibit and sell my work.

Two days ago i went to my studio and the gauge on the heater said ZERO. there is ice on the street corners where the water has frozen in the gutters. In the more central chic places they put salt on the ice making it mushy, but not in Ivry.

The plastic bubble in the atelier is more open than last winter because I want to be able to see out the window. I have big holes in it where the icey northern wind comes in and the heat flys out of.

After about three hours with two heaters going I can get the temperature up to 9° C. Last year it went up to 14. I debate whether to take the time to put up more plastic or to just paint. The oil based eletric heater with a blanket around it and my chair keeps my back toasty so it seems a waste of time to climb a ladder and calk and staple more plastic. It is all so terribly bohemian. Personally I would prefer to have a nice good looking atelier in Paris with heat and hot water. Better yet would be a three month vacation in the tropics but a week at Saturnia in Tuscany would do too.

Every night when I clean up I take my paint brushes home to wash them. The sink is on the other side of the plastic bubble and it is even less isolated, basically like being outside. The water is so cold, you can see your breath when you cross the space. I don' know how the young Korean girl, my studio mate can sit there and paint. I tell her to bring her easel into the plastic bubble but she stays in the icy cold.

Today I have a model. I was looking for a man of African descent to paint a portrait of Othello for a show in Florence February 14th. The show is called Broken Hearts - everything passes even winter and broken hearts. I actually started it in the beautiful studio gallery that I had in Florence. The studio with the frescoed ceilings and the terra cotta floors. There wasn't any heat there either. But it was warmer, maybe it was the Jack Russell on my lap that made it seem that way or maybe it was Vivoli around the corner with their excellent hot food served at lunch. Ho Hum.

At least I can paint what my heart desires. Portraits was my first love and now I am back at it. I feel like a novice. After 20 years of landscapes of Tuscany portraits are the redescovery of an old love. I guess it is kind of like finding Benoit, the guy I came to Paris for. It is exciting even in the freezing cold.

How excited I am that now I have found a new series to paint. French pastries. I love to look at these min edible sculptures but not to eat them. I love the bright colors and the shapes. To see these in rows in a boulangerie is just to die for.

I look at them and imagine them melting in my mouth. The taste of sugar attacking my tastebuds and coating my tongue. The contrasting colours melting into a grey blob in my stomach. And then bleh I am turned off. Give me bitter black chocolate but none of these highly decorative pastries. Painting them is a different story.

Obviously Wayne Theibaud has influnced me

Here is a picture of the floating loft, each chain can hold up to 100 kilos and they are suspended from a total of five beams.

Before the loft all of that stuff was in the middle of my workspace space. The space is only half the atelier. I rented out the other half to another painter

OMG I am embarassed to post this but what the hell. It is a historical moment for any woman to be in this state. I have two months to go so am trying to get as much painting in as possible. I figure that I will be able to go for another three to four weeks and then should probably hang around the apartament that is just in front of the hospital.

The painting that I am working on is of a cafe in Saint Germain-des-Pres it is 150x150cm. The one behind me is rue Saint Jacques. I make it a point to never smile for these photos of myself next to the paintings. I don't know why but a toothy smile at work seems so Jane Fonda to me.

Here is how my painting is progressing. Today I worked alot more on it and got a call from someone that has reserved first choice just from seeing the photo that I posted earlier.

It has happend to me before to sell paintings while I am still working on them. One I sold twice in the sense that three people wanted it. I said that the painting I was copying was already sold. I was repainting one of my paintings but adding lemons and taking out the figs when another peson came by and ordered the same painting from me. That was cool but kind of boring to do the same one three times.

Today my new studio mate was not there. I took advantage in ripping down the plastic that was separating the space in half and of playing loud music all day. This new studio mate was so nice and kind before moving in but has all of a sudden become terribly territorial now that they have moved in. They are setting all of these limitations on me. I can handle that the music bothers them but that they take the side with two walls of windows and then put up curtains to block the light is not cool. It actually pisses me off big time. I like my side because I have two huge walls.

I expect that they will freak out on me tomorrow.

Today I had so little time but wanted to get some work done. Here is how the painting has progressed. So far so good...

My studio mate that has been there since mid January came in with a friend and they took away several of his paintings. When he came back I told him that he looked good. He was happy that I pulled the plastic down but when I told him that I did not want a curtain put up in lieu of the plastic that bothered him. He sat down and we talked. He understands why I don't want a curtain and that is good.

Then he lost it. I think that he is having a midlife crisis but an identity crisis for sure. He is really a nice person but more than "kind of heavy." I listened to him for about 40 minutes. It is sad to see someone so distressed. He hasn't left Paris even for a weekend in 5 months. I told him to take a vacation to start with - a week. Then if he is still thinks he needs to leave Paris and find a new life quit women and not throw his paintings in the trash (they're nice) well then maybe it is time to change. I said you only have one life and it is worth being happy. If he does go then I need to find a new studio mate but I know that he will remain a friend. Actully I would prefer someone more light hearted. If he stays it will be fun to see what he decides to do and be. Hopefully happier.

Working in oils on a new subject matter. This painting started out well but is not how I imagined finished. I really didn't know how I was going to finish it. It is the first time that I have used black pigment.

A common sight in Paris are these vans owned by private people that are targets for graffitti. This one is a friend's of mine. She actually likes it but when driving around gets stopped by the police alot. She did not do the painting so askes the police if they stop her because her van is "tagé" (graffitteed.) There is not much graffitti on street level or on monuments like you see in Italy but there are these trucks AND on the walls up above the roofs of buildings there are alot of graffitti paintings. I guess painting on private property is less punishible than on public. Who knows.

I don't know what to title it.

After going to the atelier and procrastinating opening the door stopping at various friends places before mine (Louis was not there) I came home and I got a telephone call from the chief of executives of Gables that was the key person in my huge commission to the corporation.

They are raving about the paintings that have been now installed in Villa Rosa and a new order is in the makings. What a fantastic surprise. YIPee!!

The Ariel Sibony galerie is my favorite in Paris. It is in Place des Vosges and is actually two galleries. Their artists truly inspire me from FIFAX to Jean-Marie DROUET to Fabienne ARIETTI to Magi PIUG and the others. FAbienne Arietti's paintings are amazing in life. They are on giant panels and the material on the sides is such a witness of her painting process. Magi Puig's paintings and FIFAX's paintings really drew me to the gallery to begin with. Sunday I went and saw Drouet's paintings in person. They make you feel so good, the warmth of the colors is so calming, the effect that he says he wants to achieve and the mastery of technique is incredible.

How much I would love to be part of this galleries team of artists. The problem for me is that I have no stock of paintings, the one I just finished of the cafe scene I sold off the easel and the next 6 months will be dedicated to the baby that is still in my belly. There is plenty of time to plan the paintings to present to them. I have 5 started...

What a relief to go to the atelier even if all I did was paint a few shadows. After a 6week marathon of new baby I am starting to breath and remember that I am an artist as well as a mother.

Of course the baby came with me. She enjoyed "I think" watching me paint in black the clothes of the people on this canvas.