my Atelier in 2007

When I moved to Paris in January 2007

I had a commission from Gables Residential 

to create 50 large format paintings 

for the luxurious Villa Rosa, but

I had only seven months to get them done and frame them and send them.

It was freezing cold and terribly grey in January.

Those seven months were filled with tears from missing my buddies in Florence 

and lots of parties with my new friends at the Ateliers of la Fabrique in Ivry sur Seine, the ugliest place in the whole wide world.

I painted, and painted,

and painted.

 Seven months later all the paintings were finished.

I'd been the eye witness of choice and ear-to-bend at the ateliers.  Couples got together, broke up, studio mates punched eachother, others loved eachother. There was a nymphomaniac that loved everyone including a  schizophrenic that followed her like a beaten dog, both wanted to confide in me.  

We drank lots of coffee.

All of the artists that I met disdained my type of painting, considering it commercial, but when they saw me whack out 50 huge ones in  seven months they were impressed.

I rented a truck and drove them all the way to Florence

to have them framed, crated, and shipped.

Now they are in Gables Villa Rosa.

My first book of Memoirs

Recently I realized that it has been twenty years since I started writing a narrative nonfiction based on my daily ink on paper journal entries, that was when I moved a overstuffed cardboard box in my atelier causing a little black book to fall on my feet.  Ouch!  I opened it and read an entry from 1991, ouch again.


Over the years my first book of memoirs has been thrown in the trash several times, the last time was about a month ago when I discovered Janet Reid's blog, Query Shark, shortly after I had the great opportunity to pitch, in person, writer-agent John Cusick.


It was painful to realize that once again, all that work, 145 pages finely revised but dead-ending, had to go to the bin.  After discovering flash fiction fridays where writers blog short-short stories, I decided to come out of the closet with my memoirs.  But this time around I am one-hundred percent positive that the book will be finished.

The count down

Only ten days work days until the show at the Parisian gallery Terre des Arts.   I just started another painting that will be the last before the show.  The last one I did this size took over 30 hours to finish.

I look forward to when they send the chauffeur to collect the 21 paintings so I can concentrate on flying to Florence and finishing the first draft manuscript that I've been working on for the last twenty years.  Less than a month ago I started once again from scratch and it is flowing.  Show not tell. Show not tell.  How can you tell what a painting is about.  You have to see it, show it.  It's the same thing, there's no gimmick.

Back to the easel.

I sold my car for 400 bucks and bought a one way ticket to Florence

Today I logged on to Chuck Wendig's blog and learned that he is to become a father.  I wish him all the best.  I like Chuck Wendig's blog because he spills his guts, sometimes too much for my taste and seems to get diarrhea of the key board but it is Chuck that inspired me to come out of the closet.
Thanks again Chuck!

In 1988 I sold my honda civic for 400 bucks and bought a one way ticket to Florence Italy.  It was hard to sell the clunker that had a collection of big round metallic pins stuck to the roof on the inside. It was gold colored and strangely enough, the owner of the house I lived at had the exact same car, same color, same year.  That was when I had a P.O. box in a town called Detour, Maryland.  For real! Don't laugh.

The summer in Detour, I sent a a post card to a guy in Baltimore that I had a crush on, these were the days when mobile phones and internet were sci-fi.  When he saw me in September,  back at art school, I asked why he didn't write back.  He thought my address was a joke and then told me that I was like a weed growing in the cracks of the city sidewalk.

That was when I lost interest.

Not long after I decided to call it quits with the US, may I get severely chastised by saying this an lose my citizenship,  I hope not.  Oh well, what I couldn't stand was walking down the corridors of the high school and hearing my colleague students talk like they were on TV.  I guess this dislike carried on too long.

In art school there were these kids that drove Mercedes to school and had jeans that were ripped on purpose to make them look artsy, perhaps I should use a French or an Italian word.  Alla carte, d'arte, j'en sais quoi  They were so damn boring.  I had to get out and find a real frustrating experience to make me feel alive so I moved to Florence, Italy.  Talk about bating at windmills.

I wanted to go to Paris but the guy I was in love with, at the time, lived in Florence.  He was plagued by a certain malessere, that went something like: I would rather read 12 newspapers a day than study for the  exam that will make me an architect instead of farting around spending my parents money while they live on 200 bucks a month and me 800, I'm too cool.

Despite his dis-ease with reality he was fun, for a while, and helped me spend those 400 bucks to purchase a super, 200E beige Vespa, which I used to ride into the Florentine Hills at 6 A.M. to paint the Tuscan countryside.  That was the beginning of my painting career, wow!

Cafe at the Marigny - the unpredictable

This morning at the Marigny there is a man harassing all the people sitting at the external tables, he wants to borrow a lighter.  He holds a beer in one hand and wobbles around, he's wearing knee length shorts with a Hawaiian pattern.  The people try to ignore him afraid of some violent jest.  He's obviously drunk and not from around here but from some periphery city of Paris.
His grabs a lighter off the table of two ladies barley touching the face of the blond.  She crunches her nose and everyone looks at him from the corner of their eyes.  He dances to some rhythm we can't hear, the noise from the traffic is deafening.  Everyone is back from Easter vacation.
The unpredictable drunk dances off to corner and without hesitation dances into the traffic.  Now the Parisians openly turn around to stare at the guy. Buses slow down and honk, an ambulance drives slowly by, cars honk.  It's chaos.  The guy dances in the middle of the busy intersection. Untouched he gains the other side and disappears in the crowd.

cafe at the Marigny - café, une boisson phsycoative

This morning at the Marigny the dust on the tables is quick to alight.  We need rain says the lady at the market.  she is probably correct but this sun is so delectable. The waiter that looks like an owl serves me.  He is gruff.

"En petit crème."  It used to be called café au lait.  Now only tourists say that.

I look on wikipedia for the definition of café and am thrilled by the description.   It is a une boisson psychoactive.   


The waiter takes forever, his bottle-bottom glasses enlarge his eyes on his face and his hair is uncontrollable.  It is hard to say what color it is.  It isn't blond but something like that.  It looks like a dolls hair that has been drug through the sand pit.  It sticks out.  He is skinny and his face has huge dimples.  Big sideburns that are not brune but darker than his hair.


Finally my coffee arrives.  

Cafe at the Marigny - Parisian memoirs

The Marigny is the cafe on the corner.  It is a brasserie and a tabac.  It could be most anywhere in Paris or France for that matter.

This morning I sit at the Marigny with my husband enjoying a cafe in this incredible April sun that has almost lasted a month without a drop of rain.  There are two guys taking down the glass walls of the terasse because it is officially summer.  One guy, the white one, is wirery, small, all nerves.  The other guy is a big happy black dude; they look like chess mates on the board.

They are bumbling around, not quite sure how to remove the thick glass panels and keep bumping into the lady drinking Bloody Mary's. It must be 8 AM.  She's smoking, we're all smoking.

The traffic light turns red and some guy stops on his scooter, he's yelling in some incomprehensible language, he's real pissed.  We think he's got turret then realize he has a head set for a cell phone.

The chessmates bump into the drunk lady that pours tabasco into her drink and put the chairs on top of the table, feet first.  The patron comes out, he doesn't like that.  Cars start honking because the light turned green and the guy on the scooter is gesticulating widly, his feet glued to the tarmac.  He drives off, more cars honk at something else.

A lady walks by crying and stomping her feet, she too is having some phone conversation.  I think the Parisians have gotten too much sun.

Time to get the studio and start painting.