Later That Same Day.

It's late afternoon. We unpack and head down to Lake Geneva. Old stone buildings, lichen encrusted walls and rows of perfectly aligned vineyards, line the narrow walkways. 

Then there's that lake.

It's Thursday Morning...

...and the TGV rolls out of Gare de Lyon right to the minute. In fact it doesn't roll, it slides out. 

It slips through the French countryside at 200 km/h plus, heading for Dijon, and onto Lausanne in Switzerland. It does 200 km/h because the French tell you it does. It does 200 km/h because cars on the adjacent freeways are doing 130 km/h, and appear to be going backwards.

High speed train travel is smooth and silky, pure joy.

After three and a half hours, we roll into Gare Lausanne and there's Swalesy, standing on the platform in board shorts and thongs. A big cheery Oz greeting in a sea of unintelligible babble.

His little red Alfa negotiates the maze of roads and signage to deliver us safely to the nearby village of  Pully (Poo-ee). In the loft of a steep alpine roofline, is Rob and Jodie's spacious apartment. And from the balcony, a view to die for.

Last Days In Paris

'We head back to the hotel for a baguette, croissant and quite good brewed coffee.The old gentleman behind the counter is energetic and fun. Ponytailed silver hair and large white moustache. Dressed in crisp white shirt and smart fitted jeans, he smokes cigars, coughs his heart out each morning and loves my moustache. 

I ask him if he is an artist and did he paint the mural in the stairwell leading up to our room? No, he had been a French airforce pilot who now loves to dabble in paint and words, "but I'm not professional"

Breakfast over, we strike out for Boulevard St. Germein, on the famous Left Bank. 

Tree lined and ritzy, tall elegant French architecture, with rows of cutting edge design shopfront windows.

On a busy corner in Montparnasse, 

we indulge in two caffe cremes and watch the world go by.

Parisians have laced the fencing of the bridge leading to Notre Dame with thousands of padlocks, each one inscribed with the names of the two lovers, locked together for eternity.

Each day from our cafe on Rue Richer, we sit and watch. 

It's about 8.30am when we head out into Paris....

...and strike a route to the Champs Elysee, which is slow and still unwinding at this hour. We enter the boulevard from the Place de Concord, in the very heart of Paris, where vast acres of cobblestoned roads, that seem to have no rhyme or reason, are negotiated by motorists with ease and speed, who amazingly appear to arrive at the other side with little stress. 


The pavements are wet from overnight cleaning and the shops along the boulevard slow to react to a new day. The who's who of haute couture purveyors line what surely must be one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world. And the show rooms of car makers project you into the 22nd century with their sparkling high tech displays and futuristic concept vehicles.

When reworking an old building, the French surround it with scaffolding and an image of what will be.

(Double click on this image and marvel at the torn corrugated cardboard)

Beautiful window at the Luis Vuitton shop, Champs Elysee.

Citroen concept car at a most remarkable showroom, 

where a five story vertical spindle rotates displaying their cars on platforms along it's length.

Movement past ancient ruins in the Louvre.

Late afternoon sun in the Jardin des Tuileries, 

the spacious gardens at the entrance to the Louvre.

People recline on green garden chairs...

...around grassy tree lined parks with bronze sculptures...

...and stroll amidst magnificent buildings.

Paris is magnificent from every angle.

Early Days In Paris.

We wander out into Paris....

We stumble upon the Cimetiere de Montmartre, full of grand tombs holding the remains of eminent Parisians. The rich, the famous, artists, poets, writers and eminent public figures dating back hundreds of years. Leafy cobbled stoned walkways protecting the dead.

Every other street corner is bestowed with a cafe straight out of some bygone era. The imagination races with thoughts of the past, when vibrant conversations over coffee and absinthe were held, and manifestoes were the beginning of new ways of seeing. 

Above the surface, gold encrusted statues on the Pont Alexandre....

....and below, 

the draughtsman's equally beautiful considerations.

Such is Paris.

Some live the dream, a studio in Montmartre. 

The view from our little apartment in the 

Hotel Peletier Haussmann Opera. 

The central void, not spectacular, but a window into the lives of those who live here.

"This morning is a slower start. The bedroom window left open to collect cool night air. The first noise of the morning from the void is an echoey 'click click'. From below a phlegmy cough and the old man lights up in the half dark. The smell of cigarette smoke smartly finds our window and I get out of bed to close it.

The light in the void is still dark at 7.00 am. The small breakfast area in the hotel has been readying itself below our room for maybe half an hour. The sliding of tables on tiles, the occasional voice and the smell of baguettes being warmed, wafts into our room, and prepares us for another day." 

 

The hotel stands minutes from the heart of Paris, and although small, it is clean, welcoming and charming. It is the perfect location from which to set out each day.

Late One Night In Paris...

                            Time exposure photos I took from the Pont Alexandre that night.

     It's a balmy evening in Paris and the sun begins to dim in the sky. Twilight suggests we should wander from our small hotel just off Boulevard Haussmann down to the Seine, and watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle into life. 

     No matter how many times you've seen her in magazines, at the movies or on TV, no matter how much you think you know her, you will always remember that first moment you saw the Eiffel Tower in Paris. 

     No one tells you about the fine filigreed curved metal that weaves patterns of lightness between the towers brutish main frame. I'm enthralled how something so large could touch the earth so lightly. She is massive but gentle, she thrills and delights. 

     So we sit on the steps leading down from Pont Alexandre to the waters edge and embrace the night. The river comes alive after dark. It's black surface reflecting golden light, which plays off the wash caused by long coal laden barges and glass topped dinner boats.   

     At nine o'clock it happens. Around the river's edge, up at Montmartre, wherever people can see her, the magic is revealed and there is an audible sigh. The tower's genteel warm glow bursts into life as thousands of lights pulse and sparkle over her metallic frame creating mayhem and magic, and clutching at the romantic in the very heart of us all.

Illustration - SALT Magazine Winter - 2011

Article - "Challenges Grow With Paradise" by Bernard Salt

Illustration - Peter Hollard (pen and ink)

I have been working on illustrations for the Sunshine Coast's SALT Magazine for a number of years and will start to include them in my blog entries. About a month before the magazine goes to press, I receive the article from Bernard Salt, and am given open slather by the editor Kate Johns to interpret the article in any way that I see fit.

Sometimes ideas are obvious and flow like sun dried salt, but often a meaningful interpretation is as hard to grind out as wet sand.

Always challenging fun. 

Read the article.

The Processes Employed To Make A Work Of Art - Robert Motherwell

"In Black and White" -  Robert Motherwell

About the Artist - Robert Motherwell

 "A few years ago I was standing next to one of my huge black and white pictures (In Black an White Nos. 2 - 183cm X 408cm. 1975) in a museum gallery, and a middle aged man approached me and asked what the picture was about, what it "meant".

     Because we happened to be standing in front of the actual painting, I was able to look at it directly, instead of an after image inside my head. I realised that the picture had been painted over several times and radically changed, in shape balances and weights. At one time it was too black, at one time the rhythm of it was too regular, at one time there was not enough variation in the geometry of the shapes. I realised there were about 10,000 brush strokes in it and that each brush stroke is a decision. It is not a decision of aesthetics - will it look more beautiful? - but a decision that concerns one's inner I: is it getting too heavy or too light? It has to do with one's sense of sensuality: the surface is getting too coarse, or is it not fluid enough? It has to do with one's sense of life: is it airy enough or is it leaden? It has to do with one's own sense of weights. I happen to be a heavy, awkward, clumsy man, and if something gets too airy, even though I admire it very much, it doesn't feel like myself, my I.

     In the end I realised that whatever "meaning" that the picture has is just the accumulated "meaning" of ten thousand brush strokes, each one being decided as it was painted. In that sense to ask "what does this painting mean?" is essentially unanswerable, except as the accumulation of hundreds of decisions with the brush. On a single day, or during a few hours, I might be in a very particular state, and make something much lighter, much heavier, much smaller, much bigger than I normally would. But when you steadily work at something over a period of time. your whole being must emerge.

     In a sense, all of my pictures are slices cut out of a continuum whose duration is my whole life, and hopefully will continue to the day I die." 

Twisted Realism Reaches Europe

In a few weeks time we leave for Europe. Ever since my “A Stranger in Familiar Place” Exhibition back in 2007, I have wrestled with the notion that I am a misplaced person.

All of the artwork that I bring to my paper and canvas, has no Australian influences, never has. Yet when I strolled around France on my first visit, there was an overwhelming sense of being “home”. 

This will be third visit in six years, and each trip feels more and more like a reconnaissance for something more permanent. This time the journey is interspersed with a wonderful week long residency, teaching my art processes and practices to senior Art students at the International School Lausanne, in Switzerland.

As I’ve prepared for this workshop, exploring my processes and practice has been very challenging, and rewarding. How much we take for granted what we do. It just happens spontaneously with little obvious thought. I just do it! I have always just done it! As you reflect on what it is you do, you soon realise the enormous accumulated knowledge and skill that has been gained over a life time of hard graft, questioning and a deep love for the thing that is ultimately your passion.

Works from 
"A Stranger In A Familiar Place"
(Oil on canvas. 76cm x101cm)

   

I love art, but I love teaching it as much, and spreading the word about the joy of exploring your passions, no matter what it is.Little do the students know that the pleasure is always all mine.

‘Tables and Dreams’ (114.5 x 76.5cm) Charcoal, Pastel, Graphite on Paper

I had a dream. I climbed one of my ladders, erected under the ceiling of a cathedral, and looked down into the dark cavernous space below. There was a table, my art books and pencils, and blank sheets of paper waiting to be indulged.

Like the paintings in the Louvre, similarly the cathedrals of Europe start to look the same. But there was one hauntingly elegant church in the heart of Avignon, called Notre-Dame des Doms that possessed me.

"Inside, a cold darkness filled the empty cavernous space. Dim light revealed  balconies and arches, straight out of the mysteries of Phantom of the Opera. The interior was fat and brutish. There was power and reference within its windowless walls. As I silently walked around, the massive pipe organ to the front left struck a long sonorous chord, that reverberated through my chest and filled the sanctuary with an ethereal, far-off sound. Loud, it wrestled with the reluctant spirit within me. I moved to one side and peered up through squat stone balustrades. In the moving shadows a solitary crouching figure, lit by flickering candle light, filled the vastness with sound."

I think this is that place. 

I often wonder what I bring to the table of life?