Blog

After the Rain : today’s sketch.

I did this sketch on Marennes Plage (France) sometime last March or April.  The sand was very wet and the sudden sun, although not a warm one, had attracted everybody out on to the beach.

Posted 10 years ago

Violette Szabo, a heroine of World War II. Snippets of French history.

Violette Bushell was born in Paris to a French mother, who was a dressmaker, and an English taxi driver father.  She had four brothers and was a tomboy. Along with her brothers, her father taught her to shoot at an early age. She was sporty and very fit. Her parents moved to England to live […]

Posted 10 years ago

Stress, stress and more stress

  The pictures go from top left to bottom right.  This is a builder called Jo.  Builders are often found to have the building skills but not the management ones, so they find themselves in a stressy situation more readily than others.  Clients don’t realize that the builder usually has to balance two or three […]

Posted 10 years ago

First names in France

Like the Americans, the British are very first-name orientated. The French do not use first names as readily as we do, though this is changing.  As an older person I do not hesitate to use the first name of a younger French person, if I know it.  If I don’t know it, but need to […]

Posted 10 years ago

Cuba and Che Guevara

Cuba and Che Guevara I didn’t like Cuba.  I feel bad saying that because they need us to like it.  Sorry.  Friends said to go before it is over-run by American tourists and changed forever.  Well, for the sake of all Cubans as well as for the rest of us, I hope it is over-run […]

Posted 10 years ago

The French language; learning French. The tu and the vous of it.

  Even Brits who, like me, have been in France many years wish the difference between tu and vous didn’t exist.  Half the French population wishes it didn’t exist.  It is a constant problem and, despite very good French, I wobble along the line between using tu and using vous, frequently tripping over, back-peddling and […]

Posted 10 years ago

Things you need to know before your parents get old.

  Sketch of my mother when she was about 88.  I see she has a book in her lap and a pencil in her hand – that was so typical of her; she had been a professor of Latin and, even when she became vague and forgetful, she still read and wrote in Latin. I’d […]

Posted 10 years ago

Modern Art 1860 – 1970. Cubism and the rest of it.

Cubism Cubism changed the world of art for good.  It was the representation of the pinnacle and also of the lowest point of modern art.   The two most famous cubists are Picasso and Georges Braque.  People have been both intrigued and scandalized by Picasso’s work, which went through various periods that he called “The Blue […]

Posted 10 years ago

Modern Art 1860-1970. Fauvism and Expressionism.

Fauvism.  This was probably the first definable movement of the 20th century.  Between 1901 and 1906 there were several exhibitions in Paris and for the first time the works of Van Gogh (Dutch), Gauguin and Cezanne (both French) were available for viewing to the public.  For many new painters the effect of seeing these great […]

Posted 10 years ago

Modern Art, 1860 -1970, Symbolism.

   Gustave Moreau, Salome. Symbolism Symbolism runs alongside and interacts with post-impressionism.  Like most of these modern art forms, symbolism started quietly before it was thought of, and carried on after it was finished. It was all largely inter-active. It was not a new idea at all but, unlike the symbolism of the pre-Raphaelites some […]

Posted 10 years ago

Books now available on Amazon:

A Call From France
French Sand
Kefani: An African Childhood
The Man With Green Fingers
Saying Nothing