Posts

Showing posts from September, 2018

Fresselines and the Colors of the Creuse

Image
This is NOT a Monet painting. It is an actual photograph I took today along the "Petite Creuse" River in Fresselines, France, where Monet painted 25 canvasses from March 7 to May 19,1889. I didn't do anything to the camera or the picture.  This is just what this incredible place LOOKS like, and why it has been inspirational for so many artists and writers for more than a hundred years.  It is about the light (and, I suppose, its interaction with the lens, be that lens on a camera or in an eye) -- that produces inexplicable colors, shapes and shadows. I have written previously about the "Valley of the Painters" in which I live. Today was a "ballade" -- an historical, artistic and literary walk led by Fresselines poet Christine Guilleaud, owner of L'Oeil et la Main  gallery and adjacent chambre d'hôte (B&B).  Using historical research, letters, stories told by locals, and her own poetry (a volume of which I now own), Christine of