Yesterday, I did not have time to do any study, because we all went to get some stuff from our house in Paziols again and check the post because my sister in law sent a birthday present for Persephone from Australia and it should arrive soon. This visit was not as miserable as I expected. Now I realize how much I wanted to run away from this village with their dark depressing attitude. So beautiful nature scenes, as the forgotten world of the dinosaurs but some people in the village are as dinosaurs too.
I picked up stuff in the house; it does not look as dark as in the last few visits when I compare house in Paziols to this house in Banyuls. It looks quiet and sad more then dark and aggressive as I saw it in my last visit. So I again started to plan to repair it bit by bit, because we never have any money to repair it fast or by a professional builder. I got some ideas what I can make work without money. Because, as in all European countries, France as in Britain, throw in trash a fortune, the only difference is that, in France, you are free to pick up anything you want from trash and it can be anything from antique paintings and furniture to building materials. Just a little problem, trash is not a shop and people throw what you need only when they like to.
Come to my lovely garden (more dacha than garden, because gardens in Paziols as most wine villages, it is not attached to a house) to pick up vegetables an flowers. My garden has started to become overgrown because, for 2 weeks, nobody has looked after it. After starving in this winter with no help from anyone, I think I planted too many vegetables, so I have no way to make so many preserves for everything I produced, so I leave some vegetables in front of the doors of people I know. Obviously I previously spoke to them, because in this village it is very unusual to receive anything for free, people break things before putting them in the trash: so mean this village is.
After doing some work in the garden, I felt better again about this place, but I do not believe even the garden can keep me there.
So the car was packed to the top as always, it is amazing how much stuff people need when they move home. New home.
Tired ,tired ,tired, but not so badly as I always was in Paziols, there is something very weird about this place and how many such places are there in France, where life turns from colours to gray?
I got an old compendium of Punch from 1875 to look at the graphic artists who did illustrations in pen and ink. Wonderful stuff. But, it is always big BUT in art history, as in any history art history, it is a matter of opinion and it is really more fashion than facts; this artist did or did not mean this, not another stuff and some artists create a lot of words around their stuff because their art does not speak for itself. So in history, as in the ocean, you must be very careful, because what you see as hard land may not be so.
I tried to do some research about Van Gogh pen and ink drawing and, in some materials on the internet, to my surprise I read that van Gogh created his own style in pen and ink. First, I just got an ordinary pen to make excises harder and tried to do everything that he did in a harder media .After 2 hours of work, it nearly sent me mad and I started to think that van Gogh was as a completely crazy or person with a compulsive disorder. But I feel that something was not going right, so I left it for a few days tried to understand what bothered me. So I got Punch from our Paziols house and look at the drawings there. Some did traditional drawing in pen and ink but some people did exactly same as van Gogh. So nothing was created by van Gogh as a “NEW” style in pen and ink, because, in his era, when you open any magazine or newspaper you will see brilliant drawing in pen and ink. It was a very popular and fashionable style of drawing in that period.
Second, what I became clear for me, was that there is no point using unsuitable instruments for drawing, such as ball point pen for pen and ink drawing.
I have many confusions about the OCA: I still do not know how much or how little I should do and in which media. I think, when I send first assignment for my tutor, I will understand everything more clearly, but so far, in sunny France, I feel as though I walk in the fog of England.
A last thought about Redon. It looks as though this study about him will bother me forever. I understand I should study his black and white pictures from which he became famous, or, I would say, people who knew him made him famous and, as all pessimistic people, he abandoned his “friend” at this point, his pictures in black and white, and moved to the charm of colours. And, I guess, new friends as well. I will try find out more about him. And I still stick to my first impression: he should have been an architect or sculptor, not a painter. He had all the right ideas to be a brilliant architect or sculptor, but, for some reason, did not push himself hard in this direction.
So, if compare the two artists, I would say I am fascinated by his art (van Gough) and I am fascinated by his personality (Redon). I would to like find more about Redon’s personality, maybe, one day, visit the places where he painted. After living in France, I know for sure France is not just the sunny and welcoming country that tourists see. France is dark and miserable if it would like to be as its people, with high expectations and no determination, pose for tragedy where there is no tragedy and never forget any mistakes that other people make; 100 or 200 years is no time to forget snot on a child’s face or another mistake that a person did in France.