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A Summer in France - Part 1 of 6

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A Summer in France - Part 1 of 6

I was woken by a hard metal object pushed into my back, three men in black army uniforms and automatic rifles gestured me to get up. Totally disorientated I clamoured to my feet when I saw my wife and daughters looking quite disturbed.
These guys kept gesturing for me to show them something, I guessed my passport. After fumbling around in my pockets I handed them the document whereupon one of them said in a heavy French accent "Ah, Canada..Welcome to France".

After a long and sleepless overnight flight arriving at Charles DeGull, I had fallen asleep on my luggage while waiting for our connecting flight to Nice, apparently there was a Bomb attack on the Pairs subway system overnight and the airport was bussing with police and Gendarmes everywhere looking for anything suspicious.
Oh well at least I was welcomed officially, so began our summer in France.

The next leg of our trip was a half full 737 that almost made us gag from the putrid smell of stale cigarette smoke which actually made me feel good for I finally kicked the habit a few years earlier. We landed in Nice on a promising and bright sunny day, perhaps the worst was behind us.

After picking our pre arranged car up and stopping for the lights to the main highway panic engulfed me, it dawned on me that I had no idea of which way to turn or for that matter figure out what all the French signs meant but I told myself that I did want to go to France to have a show and paint so I closed my eyes and turned left which turned out to be the right move, so things were getting better it seems :)

Some years a go while at New York's Art Expo I received an offer from a very classy lady to have a one man show at her galley in Vence, France. The town is nestled in the Alps Maritimes region of southern France and is the local area's economic engine which includes the famous tourist destination of Saint Paul de Vence.
Needless to say my wife Brenda and daughters Leana & Tracey voted on coming along for this adventure in France.
We rented a villa that was was part of a historic artist's commune overlooking a beautiful forested ravine complete with goats our daughters named Momma & Baby which turned out to be my first encounter with gender issues for Momma turned out to be a Poppa after a neutering experience which our hosts Nall & Tushi, vowed to make right by someday implanting a pair of silver balls. What more can I say, after all they are French LOL.

Opening night at the Galley is best described as a wonderful party with guests discussing my work in detail which with my limited French at times became comical rather than embarrassing. The Nice Martine news story of my opening and work did much to clarify my comments and dubbed the show "A painter who paints with light"

There after, each morning I would head into town to help along with the gallery staff, to open the gallery while my family explored the local market and this quaint historic medieval town's delights. At about noon the doors closed to open again around 4PM which to this day I consider a very sane way of living one's life. It allows time to explore the nocks and crannies of the centuries old structures while still having plenty of time to enjoy the gastronomic lunch delights France in known for.
When the doors closed around 9PM, evenings became a special time, we picked one of the number of the open air restaurants to spent at leisure, a couple of hours enjoying the new found dishes and get to know some of the locals while their children played in the adjacent cobble stoned square.

Once they learned that I was an artist showing my work locally, I found their respect for the arts humbling. Increasingly they would drop by the gallery to see my my work and bring friends and family.

The show ran for 6 weeks allowing plenty of time to gather reference materials for future paintings and explore the area known as the Cote Azure, roughly from Saint Tropez to Menton on the Italian border. Each town and village offed countless painting opportunity not to mention the ambience the Mediterranean is known for.
Each time I turned a corner the scene would awe me, that lasted until the next corner and so on.
The French while while fiercely independent are also masters of tradition. The many things that seem to be unique to France are that because of tradition which sadly is starting to erode in our world of globalization, a realization that dawned when I walked into what at that time was the largest shopping store I had ever seen.
Within its walls, Carrefour, located in Nice, sold everything from groceries to clothing and cars, it could have taught Wall Mart a thing or too.

The day started out bright and sunny like all the others our French summer had so far given us and was awaken by some odd noises coming from the front door of our rented villa. I slowly opened the door to be greeted by our goat friends, Momma and Baby who proceeded to walk right in as if this was routine. Both of our daughters looked down from their loft bedroom area and stated laughing while asking my wife to get the bag of spaghetti out. It urned out that the goats loved dried spaghetti they had fed them the day before, so our breakfast included guests and spaghetti.

I had decided to take a day off from attending the gallery and explore the back roads of this painters paradise for some references, we where told of a quaint but popular little restaurant higher up in the region's mountains in a place galled Coursegoules so we set out on our adventure of discovery and potential gastronomic delight.
Rather than rent a car we had actually bought a car, if you plan to stay longer than 30 days it is cheaper that way because it becomes a used car and the dealers can get a tax break which along with a buyback guarantee they pass on to you. We oped for a small diesel Renault which was the right choice to navigate some of the smallest lane ways the French call roads I had ever encountered not to mention the village streets where we actually had to pull the mirrors in to stop from hitting the buildings.

As we drove higher and higher the views of the blue sparkling Mediterranean became more aw inspiring as I realized how aptly the name Cote Azure (Blue Coast) was for this region. My mind struggled hard to figure out which of my artist colours of blue I would have to mix to archive even a close likeness.
What was yet harder to comprehend was the luminance of the soft blue sky.
This area is washed with a unique light the many artists before me have struggled to capture and my guess is that it has something to do with the dry Sahara winds called the Mistrals locally, that blow across the warm Mediterranean from Africa creating an atmosphere that dissipates the sunlight in just the right way.
Continuing along the road it became clear that we had left the more populated areas far below, encountering everything form one car stone bridges to herds of sheep it seemed around each corner. A final turn and there it was Coursegoules a little stone village clinging to the side of a mountain which I was actually able to drive into the one street center and find a parking spot. We had gotten used to seeing villages that seemed abandoned during the early afternoon store closing time but this palace really looked abandoned. The only place even resembling a restaurant was beside the village water fountain with a description reading "Souvenir De Mr. Rhodes", probably some long forgotten benefactor. So when life gives you a lemon, I decided to make lemon juice and painted this lovely little scene of the fountain and the abandoned restaurant beside it, so continued our French adventure :)

Michael Swanson is a Canadian Artist who enjoys traveling to capture some of the world's great places. You can subscribe to these blogs at upper left of screen.