News and Terroir

Hay bales at Castelbon, Betchat, France 11 x 14 oil on board.

Sitting in a park in Paris, France, reading the news and it sure looks bad. They won’t give peace a chance, that was just a dream some of us had. - Joni Mitchell, from Blue

The news is bad lately, especially from France; my heart hurts from the atrocities and suffering. Following another horrific attack, a U.S. presidential nominee tweeted that “France is no longer France.” I am back on the blog to report that this is not true. France is very much still France.

I recently returned from a sojourn in France to visit my friend Noelle at her lovely artist residency, Bordeneuve. Each year she welcomes painters, composers, writers, film makers and other artists to stay and create in a spectacularly peaceful and enriching environment. I’ve been painting in France since 2001, and this was my 5th year at Bordeneuve. Arriving there is like coming home.

Trout before dinner - caught fresh from the river near
Niaux by my friend and wine expert Jerome Garcia.

The scenery – the greenery, coming from drought-stricken Southern California – is gorgeous, the rain delightful, even when it keeps me from painting en plein air. Bordeneuve is surrounded by forest and field; bird song in the morning is loud enough to be irritating, especially pre-dawn. Being there is transformative, as I become the painter I need to be, free of external distractions, nourished by the surroundings and the people I’ve come to know, and the local cheeses, produce, meats and wines.

A  perfect melon, 14 x 11" oil on board.

The French have a term, terroir, familiar to wine connoisseurs, to describe the environmental and climate conditions specific to a place that influence what grows or is produced there. For me, a painting is a product of terroir as well, influenced by the place it is created. What I learn when I paint there accompanies me home and continues to influence my work and my life. Many of my favorite painters were French – Monet, Manet, Matisse, Cezanne, Chardin, Fantin la Tour; others, like Sargent and Van Gogh, spent many years there. Over the years I have stood in their studios, wandered through the places they lived and painted, tried to soak up the essence of places that spoke to them.

At the Saturday market in St. Girons, I select produce based on beauty so I can paint it before I eat it. I believe that people are also part of terroir. The farmer asks which day you plan to eat a melon, so she can select one that will be perfectly ripe on that day. I buy chèvre from the cheese monger I first met 5 years ago, and the same goes for the pâté and saucisson. Running into friends, we exchange bises (kisses on both cheeks) and conversation (this year, much on Brexit). Every day I read, walk, paint, nap, do yoga; eat, sleep, repeat. C’est parfait.

Quick 6 x 8" oil on canvas sketch at
Niaux, in the Pyrenees.

Ann Raver, the former garden writer at the New York Times, once wrote that when the ancients were sick, they walked among trees and plants and breathed the fresh air to soothe their pain. For me, travel is a balm for the soul as well, and visiting Bordeneuve is a restorative antidote to bad news in the world.

I read this week that fewer tourists are travelling to France out of fear. I think about it every time I board a plane; perhaps it will be my last trip. But the thought of not going is far more dreadful; and beyond that, the thought of allowing other horrible people to succeed in making me afraid is anathema. That includes one current U.S. presidential nominee.

Girolles et Artichauds (chanterelles & artichokes)
11 x 14" oil on board, as delicious as it was beautiful!

Joni Mitchell sings that France is “too old, and cold, and settled in its ways,” as she longed for her home in California. I long for France from my home in California, so coming home I have to ask: “Will you take me as I am, strung out on another man? California, I'm coming home.” 


Here I am, home again, but with France in my heart, hoping for better news, looking forward to the next time. Vive la France. 

The Color of Snow

Watercolor study of the Huron
River in winter, Ann Arbor,
Michigan.

As an art teacher, I try to teach my students to see the world, to become careful observers. So many people travel through life unaware of this incredible world we share, and if we are to raise our children to be thoughtful stewards of the earth and all its inhabitants, first they have to appreciate and be grateful for it. For me, gratitude for this life begins with appreciation of beauty and nature, and that appreciation begins with seeing and experiencing.
 



Snowy woods in Ann Arbor,
Michigan (watercolor).

This winter storm blasting friends and family across the northeastern United States and Western Europe brought to mind one of my favorite paintings by one of my favorite painters, Claude Monet. His painting, La Pie (The Magpie), painted around 1868, is in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and several years ago traveled to the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. Even though I’d seen it in Paris, I traveled to San Francisco to see it again; and later when I was in Paris, I went to see it again. I am a bit of a Monet junkie, I suppose, but there is no comparison to seeing his paintings in person. 

The painting depicts a black bird in a snow-covered landscape near Etretat and was painted on location. It was rejected by the jury of the famed Salon in 1869, according to the Musée d’Orsay, because Monet was more interested in perception than description, as was the custom of the respected painters of the day. What I love about the painting is that Monet captured that perception – you can feel the air, the cold, still tranquility of the winter’s day that Monet experienced. It’s all there, almost 150 years later.  



La Pie, Claude Monet, 1868, courtesy of the Musee d'Orsay.

As for my students, this painting is a way to get them to observe subtlety in the world. When I ask my students “What color is snow?” they unanimously answer “White!” (in spite of the fact that we are in Southern California, we occasionally get snow on the  mountains behind our town and most of my students have travelled to places where snow actually happens).


Yet when we take piece of bright white paper and place it over Monet’s snow-covered landscape, we find all kinds of colors – blues, pinks, purples, yellows. My students love this discovery – such a surprise! Snow is purple! When we really look at a snow-covered landscape we will discover the same thing, but only if we look carefully. The best feedback an art teacher can receive is from a parent who says “My kid showed me that snow can be purple – who knew?”

We also have wonderful discussions about the color of water, but I’ll save that for a rainy day (not forecast anytime soon around here, sadly).

On Monhegan

Monhegan Island Morning, Rebecca Stebbins, 2013

I was asked by a modern sculptor who saw my work online, “What’s the point of doing things that have already been done?” It came off like an affront, but I believe his point was that ‘real’ artists should push forward, seek new forms of expression, reinvent genres and challenge the status quo. I respect his point, for without it we could never have opened the door to a Vincent Van Gogh or Maya Lin. There are also artists whose attempts to shock the world seem more like self-indulgent fodder for a therapy couch than seeds for a new movement in art, but even the art world has its Betamaxes and New Coke.

My artwork is impressionistic, representational, or as a friend says, I paint things that look like things. It is what I love to do and to look at, whether a Monet landscape or a Chardin still life. I leave it to others to shock, repel, or disgust their audiences, or to confront them with difficult challenges. There is room enough in the art locker for all of us.

Edward Hopper, High Noon, 1949

I am painting for a few days on Monhegan Island, 10 miles off the coast of Maine. The 50 or so local residents call it “the rock,” and it is: a giant, rugged rock topped by pine forests and surrounded by the cold, swirling riptides and currents of the Atlantic Ocean. Monhegan has Maine’s highest cliffs, dropping 168 feet into the sea.

This place  has drawn people for thousands of years for its rich fishing; there is still a working harbor, primarily lobster boats. For 150 years the island has also called to artists, and many iconic American painters have painted here.

Everywhere here I see a Hopper painting. Edward Hopper was a distinctive American artist who forged a unique style that was sparse and clean. He often painted New York and Paris, and here, where his eye was drawn to the crisp lines of the dormered houses against the profoundly blue sky, or rusty rocks in a deep teal ocean.


Edward Hopper, Blackhead, Monhegan 1919

The current exhibition at the Monhegan Art Museum in the lighthouse features Monhegan artists who were affiliated with the New York Armory show in 1913, a watershed moment in American art history. Most of the paintings, by Robert Henri, Leon Kroll and others, are bold, modern landscapes. One would expect Hopper’s stark houses or rugged rocks here, but instead we find his still life painting of a jug and copper bowl, in tonal shades that look very much like Chardin.


Jean-Siméon Chardin, Still Life, c.1732



Edward Hopper, Jug & Copper Bowl
1903

French painter Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin was a master of the beautiful, painterly still life works he created in the 18^th century. So here was Hopper in 1903, considered modern, ground-breaking and unique in his approach to his subjects, painting in the style of a Frenchman who had “done it already” centuries earlier. I wonder if anyone ever asked him, “What’s the point -- it’s been done before?” The piece was lovely, if a little out of place amongst modernist landscapes. I like to believe that Hopper found value in still life painting in the way that I do: as an opportunity to take a fresh look at old forms, a study in relationships, an exercise in seeing things as they are.   



 

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My Sweet Cherries, Rebecca Stebbins 2013

 

 

 

 

For more about the 1913 Armory Show, see http://www.boothbayregister.com/article/monhegan-artists-and-1913-armory-show/16938

A Matter of Taste?



The Magpie by Claude Monet. Worn out or enduring?

Being a painter allows me to explore a life of introspection and discovery. My aim is to continually learn, sharpen my skills and deepen my understanding of what I want to convey through my work. I am interested in beauty, and my goal is to discover beauty and to share it, to encourage other people to care about the beauty of our natural and artisanal world, and to understand how precious and how fragile it is.

When I paint outside, I choose to paint the landscapes I love, mostly in California and in France. I am drawn to the rugged beauty of the coast and the mountains, and to the quality of illumination that exists in certain places and at certain times. I am looking for the shapes and colors that work together to tell a story or invoke a sensation.

When I wrestle with the challenge of creating something new or saying something profound, I am drawn back to the enduring appeal of the paintings of the French and California Impressionists. They were groundbreaking artists of their time, and now they are not. Still, many people are drawn to their paintings, which command astronomical prices and sold out museum shows. So are they old and worn out? Or did they create something timeless? I believe there is value in discovery and innovation, and there are plenty of contemporary artists whose work I admire who are pursuing beauty in new and different ways. I also believe that in 100 years we may not be so captivated by pickled sharks and rumpled bed sheets posing as art. But we may still be enchanted by the dance of light on a haystack, or the curl of shadow underneath a wave. And as long as there is magic to be found in the lightness of the world, there will be value, for me, in painting it.
  

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
Natural history, or art history? Or just a pickled shark?