Layers of history
The Way to Berniquot
Berniquot the wind-whipped plateau, whose ragged edge I can barely make out atop the stone cliffs that tower above Durfort, fascinates me. I wonder how the villagers who fled from Sorèze and Durfort to Berniquot in the 10th century when the Vikings arrived to plunder their land and burn them out of their homes managed to tough it out for the better part of three centuries on those inhospitable heights.
A bedroom in La Villette
As Gertrude Stein might have put it “there was plenty of ‘there’, there”, although there was somewhat less “there”, there when we arrived in Soreze in 1993.
My friend Alice and I had come from California to visit our friend Carole, who had just bought a house (fixer-upper) in Sorèze, a quiet village in the department of the Tarn. An old and venerable center of learning, it has some examples of fine architecture like the Renaissance buildings of L’Abbaye École. (As well as more modest monuments to its medieval past like the “pig doors” on Rue Azaïs.) Our friend Carole bought the house on Rue Ferlu for a song. Alice and I made the long trip from California because we knew it would be as amazing as the other houses Carole has transformed into “art houses” with her brilliant imagination and hard work. She painted the walls with charming scenes and vignettes, all in the vibrant colors of the South of France. She didn’t stop there, she painted the light fixtures, the furniture, the floor; in fact any surface to which paint might adhere. The end result was enchanting; everyone loved “La Villette.” (more…)
arrogance
When I went into my studio yesterday I felt I had nothing to bring to the virgin white gesso-coated plywood. I fumbled through my scrap basket and finally chose an image generated from a collage I did earlier this year. I stole the face from a collage I had done in ’08. The combination was the trigger that got me going. I alter these borrowed images with acrylic paint and colored pencils once they are glued in place. The background is lifted from a third collage. I discovered that printing on transparency for ink jet printers, sanding the shiny surface (non printed side) and applying a thin wash of “Titan Buff” by Golden Acrylic gives a convincing incaustic-like (wax) surface. After I glue it in place with Soft-Gel Matte, I apply a another layer of Matte medium to remove any shine.
Although it has metamorphosed into several versions of itself, this strange image continues to haunt me. I’ve decided to paste copies of my work into my journal and see what words fall into place around them. This piece is on birch plywood; a cheap and sturdy surface for mixed media collage. I use scanned images of my finished work, and drawings to generate new collages. I’m still looking for the perfect paper which is heavy enough not to wrinkle when glued with acrylic gel medium yet thin enough to go through my printer.
face and torso
background
silouette image