Antibes
France
1 December 1996
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
6 x 4", archival mat & backing to 10 x 8"
US $195 (includes USPS Priority Shipping)
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This was my last day on the Côte d'Azur and, as you can see, a glorious day it was. I spent the afternoon in Antibes Juan-les-Pins where I ate lunch and wandered aimlessly around the old town. I poked into Heidi's English Bookshop, found the most wonderful lavender oil at a little street market and walked by the Musée Picasso which was, you guessed it, closed. Finally, I settled down on the sea wall where I watched some old men play bocce ball before pulling out my paint kit.
After an enjoyable session, I was very pleased with the results — especially with the way the pigment and water formed a perfect ear for the little dog, and with the yellow color of the walls (one of which is the Picasso Museum) against the blue sky. The old men broke from their game and a few came over to look at my work. They looked, laughed and told me "This is a very famous scene! Hundreds and hundreds of people come here and paint that exact same scene over and over again." I replied, in English, "Yes! But they don't have your friend and his dog in their paintings, do they?" This is my favorite painting of all which makes sense because it came after making one after another almost every day for about two weeks. Practice is the way.
Making these paintings saved me from the despair of loneliness and provided me with activity and purpose when I might otherwise have become terribly lost. The painting was also planting a seed that would help me find my way through this touring singer-songwriter lifestyle. As I read back through my notes from this time, it is clear that I knew from early on that the incessant traveling and lack of stability was extremely unhealthy for me but I was in it up to my neck and had four more recording projects ahead of me.
The next morning, after checking out of the Hôtel Pastoral, Monsieur Noël Dumas walked with me, helping to carry my bags, to the train station. I really should have taken a photo of him and Jasmine, his cat. He was very dear and made me feel perfectly comfortable.
Then it was on to the last leg of my tour, through Chur, Domat/Ems and Thun, Switzerland, then Langenau and Munich, Germany before returning to my darling friends in Brussels who have always generously provided me with comfortable, homey landing and take-off accommodations for my European tours.
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.
Antibes Juan-les-Pins
Bust of Jean Cocteau
Bust of Jean Cocteau
(before la Chapelle St. Pierre)
Villefranche sur Mer, France
28 November 96
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
6 x 4", archival mat & backing to 10 x 8"
US $195 (includes USPS Priority Shipping)
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On the 27th, I hopped the train to Eze. The train stops at Eze Bord de Mer, right on the sea. Not really knowing where I was going (sound familiar?), I looked for some tourist information. The kiosk was closed so I looked around and spied a small sign that said "Chemin de Nietzsche". Ok, I thought, I'll walk the trail. It looked like it might head up to the main village of Eze. It was a very nice walk although I must have turned off the trail at a certain point because suddenly I was in the brambles and climbing a very steep incline. I looked back and was surprised at the height I'd reached. It seemed closer for me to reach the top then to head back down so I continued up the rough terrain. Finally I reached the back patio of a restaurant, turned around and realized that I'd just climbed a cliff! No wonder I was so beat. I wandered around the very interesting, very old stone village and finally collapsed for some lunch. All I wanted to do was hop back on the train, get back to the hotel and lay down. This was not a day for painting. When I went in search of a bus to ride back down to the sea, I learned that no buses were running till May. May? Taxi? No taxis here! So I walked all the way back down to the train station. By road that time. I was tired but it was a lovely day (once out of the wind at the top of the cliff), the streets were pleasant and the view, fabulous.
The next day was Thanksgiving. Alone, even on the Riviera on a beautiful, sunny day, I was feeling pretty low. I bought a copy of the International Herald Tribune (which I read every day in Nice) and headed to Villefranche sur Mer where there was a chapel that Jean Cocteau had painted. I was disappointed but not surprised to find that la Chapelle St. Pierre was closed for the month of November. So I sat down in the little stone courtyard next to the chapel on the edge of the sea and made this painting of the bronze bust fine coated with verdigris. Old women sat nearby on the sea wall repairing big fishing nets. The sun danced on the sea. It really did. A lumbering Golden Retriever splashed through the waves on the sandy beach behind me. I thought about Cocteau.
The painting did not lift my spirits that day which really added to my woe. How can I be sitting on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea on a magnificent day like today, I thought, and have my head and heart lost inside a black cloud? I swung my legs over the edge of the sea wall and glanced through the Herald Tribune. My eyes fell on an Art Buchwaldcolumn, Le Grand Thanksgiving. I read it. I laughed out loud. What good medicine! I was lifted out of the shadows and very grateful. When I got back to the states, I wrote Buchwald a letter telling him the story and included a CD. He wrote me back a very nice note thanking me for the CD and for telling me what was going on in my life. "I'm glad I could make you feel good." he wrote.
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.
Maritime Alps
Maritime Alps from Pointe de Bacon
Cap d’Antibes, France
26 November 96
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
4in. x 6in., archivally matted & backed to 8 x 10
US $195 (includes USPS Priority Shipping)
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On the 25th I woke to a rainy day in Nice and decided to head up to Digne, the lavender capital of the world. I could live without lavender but life would not be quite as sweet. Lavender is simply one of the greatest treasures of my life experience so you know I was looking forward to visiting the place where the best lavender is grown. Even though it was November and the lavender was harvested in August.
I boarded the Chemin de fer early in the morning and off we went on one of the most rickety train rides I've ever taken. But it was fun and, as we ascended, snow began to fall. I didn't realize that I was headed into the mountains (another instance of deciding to head off to a destination with no plan whatsoever) but up we climbed and down the snow came. The landscape, the vistas, the snow were all beautiful and the rickety ride was sort of fun. By the time we got to Digne, I was ready to move my legs and see some sights but the snow had turned into freezing rain and the roads and sidewalks were all cold and slushy.
I was beginning to get the idea that if everyone in Paris heads to the south in August, everyone in the south closes shop in November. The tourist office in Digne was closed so I ducked into some little cafe and bought the single most expensive cup of tea ever. The café seemed to be the only shop that was open. I realized that lavender fields were out of the question. I had the address of Alexandra David-Néel's house and headed off to find that. All I managed to find were many, many puddles and suddenly it was time to head back for the train. Once on board, I took my soaking shoes and socks off and placed them over the baseboard radiators for the entire, miserably cold and wet ride back to Nice. Oh, well, I thought. I tried.
The next day, brisk but bright and beautiful, I set off for Antibes (again, with no plan). After coffee and a biscuit, I set off for a walk, having no idea where I was going. As it turns out, I walked the length of Cap d'Antibes. Fortunately. I did not walk around the entire shoreline but even the length of the peninsula was a hike albeit a lovely hike. I could find no place to stop and rest so, when I came upon a rocky outcropping, I sat myself there for a painting session looking back in towards the main coastline. As I worked on the foothills and mountains in the painting, I suddenly realized that I was looking at the first snowfall of the year in the Maritime Alps. The snow that had fallen as I climbed to Digne the day before.
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.
Tombeau Grosso
Tombeau de Famille Francois Grosso (1894)
Nice, France
24 November 1996
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
6 x 4", archival mat & backing to 10 x 8"
US $195 (includes USPS Priority Shipping)
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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.
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
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
4in x 6in, archivally matted & backed to 8in x 10in
US $195 (includes USPS Priority Shipping)
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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.
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
Watercolor on cold press Lana paper
4in. x 6in., archivally matted & backed to 8 x 10
US $195 (includes USPS Priority Shipping)
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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.
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.
