Tag Archives: Sorèze

My Exposure to Fauvism in Collioure, France

This week has been a frustrating one for me because of trivial obligations like an annual doctor’s appointment and buying food. Activties like this cut into my painting time. So I have not finished the Irish painting that I am working on.

Since I frequently think of my journey from never having painted to now, I thought I would write about a painting that I did three years after my first painting class in France. This time the painting class was again in France, but not where I had originally painted. It was in Collioure on the Mediterranean where it meets the Pyrenees.

Collioure, France, acrylic on canvas, 11 x 14 inches. Ann Hart Marquis

Collioure is a very picturesque small town that has drawn many painters including Matisse, Derain and Dufy. It is referred to as the birth place of the Fauvism movement in painting. This class was taught by the same teacher I first had in Soréze, France. She considered herself an Fauvist painter. She was responsible for my first exposure to Fauvism.

Collioure, France

As you can see from the above painting, my drawing skills were still lacking as were my use of brush strokes and layering color. I had not yet mastered the idea of perspective. Fortunately, it is a very colorful town so some of the colors were representative of what I saw and some were colors that were already a favorite part of my palette.

This painting was done in plein air, while I was sitting on the steps of a lovely house that looked down into the town and surrounding hills. It was an ideal place to paint.

Although today is the first time that this piece has been photographed, I see it every time I walk into my studio because it is hanging on the side of a cabinet. It reminds me of how I started and how far I have come. I have kept all of my drawings and paintings over the years. The only ones that I don’t have are sold.

It is important to me to be able to look back on all of the work I have done. They always make me smile.

Romantic Painter

I am a romantic painter. I have found definitions of “romantic” such as a sensibility; primitivism; love of nature; sympathetic interest in the past, especially the medieval; mysticism; individualism.

I am also sentimental. Webster defines someone who is sentimental as a person excessively prone to feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia.

That brings me to nostalgia. I am nostalgic and find myself attracted to the Irish notion of a gentle melancholy that permeates life. While I reflect on Ireland and my Irish paintings, I am also thinking about why I am drawn to certain subjects, places, or ideas.

Such thoughts drew me to one of the first paintings that I ever did. I was on a painting retreat in France with no experience at all. Each day we would be driven to some exquisite location to paint. We would arrive and scatter, painting whatever we were drawn to. One could have chosen a lovely view, goats, a forest and other people.

Ruins was done by romantic painter Ann Hart Marquis

Ruins, acrylic on canvas, 11×14 inches.

I wandered around and found a three story 19^th century home that was in ruins. What happened to this house, I wondered. Why didn’t this seemingly once lovely place undergo repairs? What was its story? Of course, that was what I decided to paint.

I have learned that I am drawn to emotions and events that I perceive may exist or have existed. That is one reason that I am drawn to Ireland and spent so many years in France. I was and am enchanted by the history, the way people lived, the myths, the beauty of both structures and raw nature.

I think that the classical definition of all of the above can be summarized to this description:

The Romantic embodied “a new and restless spirit, seeking to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate individual effort at self-assertion, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals.

I especially like the part about unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals. If I ever get a clear idea of what those goals are, I will let you know.

The Fauvists

For the last four weeks I have been painting with gray as a major component in my paintings. As one could imagine, I have grown tired of grayed down colors for now. So this week I decided to create a painting that has little or no gray.

Optimistically Tenacious, acrylic and ink on canvas, 14 x 1.5 inches.

It felt wonderful to get back to bright pure color. After I finished this painting I was reminded of my first painting teacher Carol Watanabe who considered herself a Fauve artist. Her class took place in Soréze, France and then later in Collioure, France. Here is an example of her work.

Carol Watanabe

The Fauvists

The Fauvists were French painters whose members shared the use of intense color as a vehicle for describing light and space, and who redefined pure color and form as a means of communicating the artist’s emotional state.

Fauvism was the first of the avant-garde movements that flourished in France in the early years of the twentieth century. Their spontaneous, often subjective response to nature was expressed in bold, high-keyed, vibrant colors sometimes directly from the tube.

Henri Matisse

“Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) and André Derain (French, 1880–1954) first introduced unnaturalistic color and vivid brushstrokes into their paintings in the summer of 1905, working together in the small fishing port of Collioure on the Mediterranean coast. When their paintings were exhibited later that year at the Salon d’ Automne in Paris they inspired an art critic to call them fauves (“wild beasts”).”

Although I never considered myself a fauvist, that use of bold color has stayed with me and frequently I have to force myself not to use colors that are really too intense. Graying down a color took me while to appreciate.

Home from France

Tuesday, I returned home from France after two months. When I am gone from New Mexico for such a long time, re-entry can be a little daunting.

Looking back on those two months brings me insight and questions about my art. During the last two weeks in France, I began to realize that my work is again going through an evolution. Everything is in limbo. I am not sure in which direction the change will take me but I believe in process and waiting to see what develops.

This is my last unfinished painting that I did in Soréze. I just ran out of time.

Last painting in France-unfinished

When I came home, I learned that I was accepted for an artist residency in 2015 in Sonoma County, California, the area in which I grew up. Sonoma County inhabits a large part of my psyche. My love of the natural world and my inspiration to paint it comes from living there for the first twenty years of my life. That area left a profound imprint on my imagination, and It shaped my idea of beauty and my desire to see that beauty preserved.

Sonoma County Artist Residency

So, already in my state of limbo, I seem to have a future creative focus. I will be exploring why my paintings still reverberate with my heartfelt ties to part of northern California.

But what to do between now and then? I will be waiting for direction.

Perspective and Inspiration

Tomorrow will be my last day in Soréze. This past week has taken a burst of energy to finish one more painting, walk around Lake St. Ferreol as many times as possible, find everything that I have scattered around this big house and pack.

Soréze, France

I have painted as much as I can, gone all of the places that I wanted to visit, and eaten all the yummy food that I wanted. I have walked almost every day and now I need a new pair of shoes. It is time to come home, which I always do with mixed feelings when I leave France. I come to this area and stay so long because I love everything, including having the opportunity to paint at all hours of the day and night.

Traveling gives me new perspective and inspiration. While I have been here, I have experienced a desire to change the way I paint to a more abstract manner, and I have. Here is painting #8.

Untitled #8, acrylic on canvas, 14 x14 inches. Ann Hart Marquis

Untitled #8, acrylic on canvas, 14×14-inches. ©Ann Hart Marquis

I feel that my work is moving quickly in a new direction and I am not sure where that will take me. I have found a painter in Ireland who does abstract landscape workshops, so maybe I will go there next year. If I do, I will probably need to visit briefly in France.

Rooftops of Soréze.

I have been in France for 14 days now and I am loving it here. I started painting the day after my friend Gail and I moved into the house in the village of Soréze. It is a medieval village. All of the houses are three stories. During the middle ages, the bottom floor was used to house the farm animals so that they could contribute to the warmth of the house.

I paint in a lovely studio on the third floor that is quite large and has windows that open onto views of nearby rooftops. It also has a great view below of the cobbled stone street. It has skylights so the painting light is perfect. There are exactly 30 stair steps from the first floor to the studio. I go from the bottom to the top about 8 times a day.

Third floor studio

Here is the first version of my first painting in process. When I took the photo, I thought that I was about half finished. It takes me a little while to get into the French painting groove.

Beginning of First Painting, Soréze, 2014

Here is the next version.

Revised version

Final revision in Soréze

I never say that I have finished a painting here because when I get home it will be stretched onto wooden stretchers bars by my stretching department, better known as Tim Anderson. Now I have canvas taped on a plywood board with green Frog tape, the color of which is somewhat annoying. By the time I get home, which will be in about a month, my paintings sometimes need a little touch up.

No title has come to mind for this painting. Any suggestions?

PS: Here is an image of the lettuce that we buy at the farmer’s market every Saturday at a nearby town. it makes three salads for two people.

Market day lettuce

The Unexpected Gifts of Travel

Two weeks ago, I boarded a plane in Albuquerque, New Mexico and arrived relatively rested the next day in Rome, where I got on a train to Poggio Mirteto, an hour north. I was then met by one of the owners of the B&B La Torretta, located in the small village of Casperia where there are no cars. Casperia is all up and down walking on cobblestones. It is 1,000 years old and feels like it. Every day I walked up and down numerous narrow walkways trying to walk them all. It was a lovely experience.

Casperia, Italy

One week ago, I arrived in France. As soon as I stepped off the plane in Toulouse, I felt a change. Although Italy was lovely, I did not feel at home there as I do in France. Even in the countryside, it just feels different although much of it looks the same. I was immediately greeted by the ubiquitous sunflowers that are everywhere in southwestern France. There are not just acres of them, there are miles, and they are huge. There are so many that to paint them seems to me to be a cliché. I have just started painting now that I am settled in a lovely home in the medieval village of Sorèze.

Ann Hart Marquis- French Sunflowers

With its challenges and marvels, its exquisite food and menus, and trying to speak French, being away from home for a while makes me feel marvelously refreshed and renewed.

Ann Hart Marquis, French Sunflower with bee

My First Painting

I have gone to France almost every year since 2000. Before that I went to France two times, the first time in about 1985, the second in 1992. Some of my friends and family tell me that I need to get out of my rut and go somewhere else. I usually agree and this year I am going to Italy and France, but I do love being in the rolling hills of the French countryside or exploring in a prehistoric cave, not to mention the freshness of French food. And of course who can’t love Paris, even though Parisians are the ones who have given the French the reputation of being rude. It is really only the waiters.

timothyb.anderson-Roadin southern France

Part of my love of France is being able to finally arrive at my final destination, usually now Soréze, after about 20 hours of travel. Once I am in the place I frequently rent, I am there. There is no period of adjustment. I know the roads and the places to go for great food or wonderful scenery. I am comfortable driving and the roads are great and very picturesque. I speak French well enough to get by, and the people are very encouraging and friendly.

Another reason I love to go to the south of France is that I have always been able to rent a house with a studio. I go there to paint. I first started painting in the small village of Soréze where I attended a painting workshop that emphasized creativity not technique. That was helpful to me because I had no technique at the time. I knew nothing of perspective, color combinations or drawing. I did, however, have a simply glorious time. And I fell in love with painting.

Here is my very first painting.

Once I learned to draw, I went back to it and made the table larger so it didn’t look like the vase was going to fall off. It is interesting to me that I already had the palette colors that I use frequently today.

Here is my second painting done at the same workshop.

We were at a goat farm and were able to wander around the extensive property. I decided to paint part of his decaying three-story home built in the 1800’s. I love this painting because when I Iook at it, I am able to feel for it as I did then. Later that day I asked a French friend why someone would let this once lovely house go to ruin. The answer was a sad history lesson for me. I was told that so many men did not return from World War I and many homes were left to crumble because no one was there to repair them. There were more than 1,357,800 French men killed and most of the fight took place in France.

France has touched my heart in many ways. I cherish it and can’t wait to get there.

How about you? Is there a special place in your heart that you yearn for?