Tombeau Grosso

Tombeau de Famille Francois Grosso (1894)
Nice, France
24 November 1996

After a stroll along the Promenade des Anglais on a sunny day, so brilliant it was almost blinding, I climbed the steps of the Colline du Chateau, a lovely park that rises from the sea to a magnificent view of the Baie des Anges. On the way up, I stopped by the Bellanda Tower and tried to read what the plaque there said about Hector Berlioz but could not translate it. [However, as Werner Pfarr points out in his comment, you can read the plaque translation on the Bellanda Tower link.]

At the very top of the park, I wandered through two cemeteries. I think that one was a Jewish cemetery and the other was filled with tombstones of angels. The largest angel statue was of the famille François Grosso. The engraving on the tomb described François Grosso as a prominent civic leader (there is a Boulevard named for him) who lost two young children within a year of each other. The statue shows an angel with a finger to her lips, reminding the cherubs to not disturb the children they are carrying up to heaven.

I fussed with the color of the sky back at my hotel room until I could not take it any further, then headed out to the Cathedral Notre Dame Saveur to hear a performance of the Bruckner Mass.

Tombeau de famille François Grosso (1894), Nice, France
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
6 x 4", archival mat & backing to 10 x 8"
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Every Sunday I post a new painting and story behind the watercolors I made while touring as a singer songwriter. Follow the stories behind the paintings of these serialized posts by working your way up from the bottom.

Palais Princier

Palais Princier
Monaco
23 November 1996

I am increasingly reluctant to write this posts. Not to post the paintings, mind you, but to write the stories behind them. I suppose that any sort of looking back has its own set of hesitancies. One part of me thinks that stories should be somehow cheerful or filled with interaction and plot and so forth. Why? Those sorts are rarely the stories I fall into as a reader. And what stories would those be, anyway? (I'll stop on that track now before riding away on the train of digression).

In fact, this solo touring was just that, solitary. And I was not in a very strong emotional state, quite the opposite. I felt isolated, bereft and worried. The settling in Nice for a couple of weeks took away the daily rush and distraction of travel and performance and I was left to settle into my own not very ebullient psyche. Of course, this was exacerbated by the fact that I was in a foreign country surrounded by the babble of a foreign tongue (perhaps the only time you will hear the fine language of French referred to such). At another time, even at another time of year, I may have easily slid in and out of relationships and semblances of conversation with residents and fellow travelers. But not that November.

Still, even bobbing up and down in my own little sea of depression, I managed to pull myself out of the lumpy bed each morning, pack my paints, look at the map and decide where to travel to explore and paint. Emerging from the hotel, I would keep an eye out for a coffee and brioche on my way to the train station. It was fabulous, really. With the Eurail pass I'd bought for touring, I was able to hop on the little train at Nice and be off to any destination I would feel like up and down the Côte d'Azur. What a treat. On this day, I picked Monaco, where Grace Kelly became a princess.

Kelly was a big name in Philadelphia where I grew up. Grace Kelly's father owned a big Brickworks and her brother was a city councilman. Both John Sr. and Jr. rowed on the Schuylkill River for the Vesper Boat Club where some of my high school friends competed "all together". My father was not in Vespers but rowed single skull on the Schuylkill for years.

I first walked down to Monte Carlo but it seemed shuttered and barren. So back up the steps to the palace. Monaco felt like a toy kingdom, diminutive and clean. In fact, I really didn't get the whole picture of Monaco. The day became increasingly raw and overcast and I'd read nothing and made no preparations for the visit, I'd only packed my paints. I could say that about each day really — I mostly let the painting lead me. The painting kept me company and gave me purpose.

Before the wind came up and temperature dropped any further, I opened my knapsack and set the paper block on a parapet along the city wall. Just as in Grasse, eventually my fingers were frozen stiff so I packed up and finished the painting back in my hotel room.

Palais Princier, Monaco
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
6 x 4", archival mat & backing to 10 x 8"
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Every Sunday I post a new painting and story behind the watercolors I made while touring as a singer songwriter. Follow the stories behind the paintings of these serialized posts by working your way up from the bottom.

Vieux Grasse

Vieux Grasse from l’escalier de L’Hotel de Ville
France
21 November 1996

On my first full day in Nice, I took a bus up to Grasse, the perfume capital of the world. Before the perfume industry fell to products that smell like embalming fluid and every Tom, Dick & Harry had their own signature scent, I used to enjoy memorizing perfume scents and being able to identify them out in the world. Most perfumes developed in the last quarter century give me a brutal headache.

I thought it would be fun to tour the perfume factories in Grasse. Fragonard was the only one open and their tour was interesting enough, especially because we were able to gather around the perfume organ where the "Nose" sits to test the scents. You can visit the beautiful new International Perfume Musuem site and sniff around for yourself.

After that I kicked around and ate lunch in a garden looking out from high up over the Côte d'Azur, then kicked around some more beginning to feel bored with isolation until I found myself in the old city where the walls of the buildings were rubbed deep with rose and orange and yellow and peach. After climbing an old narrow staircase, I turned to find the perfect vantage point to study the Place de la Poissonnerie. Although I was out of the sunlight, the temperature was dropping, and the wind whipped around the stone walls, I pulled out my paint sack and started in to this one. At a certain point, I had to stop because my fingers were so stiff with cold that I was having trouble working. I seem to remember shaking a bit, too. So I finished this off back at the hotel room later in the afternoon and into the evening.

Vieux Grasse, France
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
4in x 6in, archivally matted & backed to 8in x 10in
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Special edition of 5 signed and numbered $39 giclée prints

Every Sunday I post a new painting and story behind the watercolors I made while touring as a singer songwriter. Follow the stories behind the paintings of these serialized posts by working your way up from the bottom.

Nice

Nice, France
30 November 1996

It was a long night of a train ride from Milan to Nice in a very cozy compartment where every possible sleeping spot was filled. Lots of interruptions by border guards checking passports as we crossed from Italy into France then from France into Monaco and back into France again. I'd had cancellations and a gap in my tour for ten days so I decided to base myself in Nice for that period. After arrival I found my way to the tourism desk where I asked for the most acceptable, least expensive accomomdations. The two lovely women there said they had just the place and sent me off to the Hôtel Pastoral on the rue Assalit. I walked over and met Monsieur Noël Dumas who would be my host for the next two weeks. My room was perfectly simple with a sink and bidet, armoire and chair by the French windows looking over the roof where Monsieur Dumas hung his laundry by pots of bright red geraniums. The bed was sort of lumpy and sagged deeply in the middle but hey, for $14 a night in Nice, I was happy. Not only that, Monsieur Dumas had a bird. I couldn't quite figure out what kind of bird it was but every morning it whistled La Marseillaise. I kid you not. Monsieur Dumas said "He ees a nationaliste!"

After dumping my bags and guitar in the room, I took myself out for a walk down to the sea. Bleary and a little sick from lack of sleep, I walked along the sea wall that wraps around the cliff you can see above. Delighting in the windy sea air I inhaled deeply just as I saw a humongous wave rise over the wall. It happened so fast there was nothing I could do but let it wash over me. And wash over me it did! Even my good Patagonia jacket could not protect me. It was such an outrageous thing to happen that I had to laugh! I was just across the street from an elegant hotel and in I sloshed with my sopping blue jeans, socks and sneakers, rivulets of water streaming off my hair. The concierge took one look at me and immediately passed a stack of lush white towels across the desk directing me to the rest room. That helped enough to get me back to the hotel without leaving a river in my wake.

As I sat down to breakfast the next morning and opened the Nice Matin, there on the front page under the headline was a photograph of some other poor fool about to be creamed by a wave in the same spot where I'd stood. I no longer felt like a freak.

I'm posting this painting out of order for the sake of the story. I made this on my next to last day in Nice when, after procrastinating much of the day, I forced myself to sit down where I happened to find myself on the beach.

Nice, France
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
4in. x 6in., archivally matted & backed to 8 x 10
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Every Sunday I post a new painting and story behind the watercolors I made while touring as a singer songwriter. Follow the stories behind the paintings of these serialized posts by working your way up from the bottom.

Firenze

Firenze, Italy
17 November 1996

I stayed in Tuscany for a few nights. Mostly, it was very confusing and exhausting because mostly, no one I met spoke English and my agent had neglected to arrange for me to be met at the train station or for proper accommodation. In one instance, I boarded the wrong train going in the opposite direction of my destination. There was a lot of talking myself down from intermittent panic attacks and carrying on as best I could when I really needed a good, uninterrupted night's sleep.

One night I stayed at some sort of country hotel although hotel might not be the best word. It felt more like an empty convent. Very bare bones with cold terrazzo floors. The woman who hosted me did not speak English but I managed to understand from our conversation that in June and July, the place hosted children from Byelo-Russia who had been poisoned from Chernobyl. You can learn more at The Chernobyl Project and about these children through one of the rescue organization sites . That conversation put my mild discomfort into perspective. I took Pipo, the resident dog for a walk at dusk through the Tuscan hills. Then I was carted off to some incredibly loud and raucous bar where I was set up on the floor in the middle of the place. I could not hear myself think let alone sing but there was a crowd seated on the ground and standing around me paying rapt attention so I did my thing and ripped up my poor voice in the process.

The next day, I was off to Bologna for a radio interview and record store performance. I knew the DJ who'd set that up and he spoke English so it was good to visit and the day went pretty well. The DJ used excerpts from my CD for the interview to save my tattered voice. The most memorable thing about that day was the memorial in the waiting room at the train station for the Bologna Massacre. The effective memorial incorporates a massive crack in the wall and the hole that was left in the floor by the blast.

For the other nights I stayed on a Biodynamic farm at a Rudolph Steiner community. That was right up my alley. It was beautiful and interesting and the people were great — not to mention the food.

I was so close to Florence that as soon as I finished my duties and before I had to go on to the next gig, somehow, I got myself there. I don't know what day it was but not long after I arrived I discovered that the museums were closing at noon or one. I managed to duck into some Medici room and am embarrassed to say that I can't remember what that was. And somehow, I managed to convince the guard to let me just run through part of the Uffizi. That was sort of ridiculous because I really did not even have time to orient myself before I had to run out again.

The day was raw and rainy so I just walked myself across the Arne, leaned against the river wall and painted this picture as the skies gave way to a little late afternoon sun. It was an o.k. way to contemplate Brunelleschi at a bit of a distance, away from the long lines to get a look inside.

Before I left Italy, I performed at a fabulous folk club in Udine where everything — the audience, the host, the food, the room, the vibe — was exceptional. I also managed to run around Venice for a long afternoon on a day when the water was at its lowest mark in years. I'll go back there any time.

Firenze, Italy
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
4in. x 6in., archivally matted & backed to 8 x 10
US$ 295 + USPS Priority Shipping

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Special edition of 5 signed and numbered $39 giclée prints

Every Sunday I post a new painting and story behind the watercolors I made while touring as a singer songwriter. Follow the stories behind the paintings of these serialized posts by working your way up from the bottom.