It's been too long, I know...

but it's been a busy, travelling fall. I went with a painting group led and taught by Tony van Hasselt, a neighbor here in East Boothbay, to Vaison la Romaine, a small town in the mountains of Provence near Avignon. I spent 12 days without worrying about the lawn getting mowed, the boats bailed, the gardens weeded,or the groceries laid in - only about what was going down on my paper! And then I went to Paris and London!

This is my favorite, i.e. most finished, painting from Provence. It is currently in the Boothbay Region Art Foundation's Plein Air Show. In the tiny hill village of Brantes, population 65, we all painted for 2 days. You can see Tony painting down the road to the bottom right of the image. And because Tony kept after me saying, "no black holes in the middle of the painting," there's a ghostly friar in the doorway of the tiny chapel, where every Christmas the entire town parades up the hill and celebrates.

Then there is this little painting of the view from my bedroom window, which I painted for the lovely friends who drove me to Portland when I left, and picked me up when I returned nearly 3 weeks later. The periwinkle color of the shutters at the far end of the street is extremely hard to find in watercolor without using white, which I finally did use. And there were grape vines everywhere, as you can see!
We stayed in a lovely inn called Hostellerie le Beffroi, le beffroi being a belltower, which in this case was over the old medieval gate to the village below the castle on top of the hill. We had to walk up the hill and into the Inn everytime we left. I have several views of le beffroi, and will post one as soon as one is finished to my liking.

After 12 days of joyous work, I left Vaison with one of the other painters, hopped on the TGV in Avignon and arrived in Paris in the mid-afternoon. I walked and talked and ate at the Cafe Constant on rue San Dominique with my friend Mme. Emily Donahue that evening, and did more of the same the next day. I spent the evening with Unesco friends, and the next day spent the whole day at the Grand Palais, in two exhibitions. The first was smaller, a retrospective of Felix Valloton, an Impressionist-era painter, who wasn't really an Impressionist. My favorite work of his is below:

 Many of the works were photographable, though not theoretically this one, and I was chastised by a guard for taking this. But it's not as if you can confiscate film from a digital camera, now can you?
The other, and the major exhibition in the Palais was FIAC Paris, one of the giant art shows proliferating around the world, led by ArtBasel and ArtMiami. FIAC is when all the biggest and 'best' galleries in Europe bring their artists' best work to show off to all the other galleries and to the hordes of collectors and spectators like me. I have not had time to sort many images out, so they'll have to wait...
After Paris, I went to London to visit my niece, the Rev Dr. Jennifer Smith and her husband, Keith Riglin, an Anglican priest. We spent quite a while looking for Alastair Cooke in Westminster Abbey, only to discover later that he was spread in Central Park, not laid down in the Abbey where his Memorial was. Afterwards, we went to Whole Foods in London, by far the biggest one I have ever been in, and quite fun. It's in Kensington, near Harrods. I felt a little like I did when I headed straight for the Starbucks located at the foot on the Great Wall of China - a wee bit guilty, and a wee bit relieved to find something familiar there! Here's Jen and me in Whole Foods, looking kind of pleased:

Well, sorry, my blogspot seems to be refusing any more images...I shall have to end this now, and do more soon. Somehow I picked up a terrible cold in London, and spent the first week home, recovering. And now I'm trying madly to catch up with myself...More soon!