Spiderboy & the Future Artist

The scene.

In France this summer I was invited to paint by two musicians who are renovating an old stone house and barn set in the rolling hills of the Midi-Pyrénées. After enjoying fresh limeade and the rich tones of a cello emanating from a back room, I set up my easel in a shady spot where the road bends between house and barn.

I started laying in a sketch over a cadmium red underpainting. I often tone the whole canvas a thin red, which creates some rich color vibrations when that red underground peeks through the final painting. It also reduces the anxiety of staring at a blank white canvas not knowing where to begin.

Some artists lay in a sketch with charcoal or pencil. I prefer to start right away with paint, using a monotone raw umber diluted with turpentine to indicate lighter or darker areas of the scene. Often I draw and wipe it off a few times before I commit to the painting. Knowing I can wipe off allows me to forgive myself for the mistakes I am about to make. Yes, painting can be fraught with anxiety and fear - of self-doubt or anticipated judgment by others, of not “getting it right.”

The characters.

 As I paint often in public places, I am accustomed to people watching as I work and not at all bothered when the viewers are very young – they are always more direct and honest critics. As I was drawing, I had that prickly feeling that someone was watching. I looked over my shoulder and there she was: 7-year old Mia, a resident of the house. She looked a bit concerned about my drawing, but she stayed silent as a mouse, riveted by what was unfolding on the canvas.

Drawing finished, I began laying in color, starting with the sky and distant air, then dancing my brush around to the pavement, grass, eaves and roof. As the painting progressed, Mia looked relieved and began to point out happily that “this part is that building there, and there’s la maison de Francis next door.” I asked if she had a sketch book, and she came back with a colorful book and a set of markers. We worked together in silence again for a long while.

I was nearly finished when Spiderboy flew up on a bicycle and came to a screeching halt behind the easel, accidentally tipping turpentine into the grass. The 4-year old superhero was frozen by this act of art, transforming his view from the swingset into a recognizable image on canvas. Mia pointed out that I had missed the potted plant at the far end of the barn, and I added it in as a finale. A day later I heard the report: Mia has announced she that she would like to be an artist when she grows up.

The finished work (note the cute plant in the red pot at the end of the barn, courtesy of Mia).

Leaving Bordeneuve (Some thoughts on an artist residency)

Fields at Bordeneuve by Rebecca Stebbins

Bordeneuve is a place that is hard to come to and harder to leave. It’s hard to come because of what you have to leave behind: basically, everything that isn’t in that small space where creativity resides. Spouses, children, friends, and all the accoutrements: laundry, for example, or cooking, cleaning, yard work. Animals to be fed and walked and loved. Bills to be paid and paperwork that piles up and supplies that need to be restocked and messes to be cleaned up and is there gas in the car? And do I have everything? You travel.

You arrive at Boussens on the crowded little train and step out into the Midi and voilà. There you are, with just your bag, your baggage, and yourself. And there is Noelle, who grabs your very heavy bag and heaves it into the back of her trusty Peugeot and you are off through the winding roads of the Ariège.

You pass farm fields and tiny villages, some with stately little homes and others with crumbly old barns, up hills and around pastures with sheep or goats, or little herds of cows in all of the colors that cows come. She turns in to a rocky track, and if you look back you’ll see the snow on the Pyrénées in the distance. You bounce down a luminous green tunnel of trees and vines and finally you pull in to a clearing with a house to the left and a barn to the right. That place on the right hardly qualifies as a barn: it is lovely, spacious, and filled with just what you need. Food, silence, books, a deep bath and a wide balcony, places to sit, to draw, to paint, to play, to dance – yes, even enough room to dance. Indoor space and outdoor space. And no clutter. You make a mental note: less clutter.



Blanchette & Edith, by Rebecca Stebbins

The first evening is jovial and calm – a lovely meal, a nice bottle of rosé, conversation that isn’t dull but isn’t deep – not yet. Later in the week the topics will grow weightier, perhaps. Tonight you are still shedding the old skin. Tomorrow you will wake up in a new skin, bright and shiny like the green garden snakes I’ve never seen there. 

The first day you will still be decelerating. You will wander and sketch, flip through books of poetry, unpack. But then something funny happens: just as you begin to accept the slowness, and the quiet, you start to hear all the noise there. For Bordeneuve can be a very noisy place, especially between the birds and the insects and the very loud cow a few fields away who bellows from time to time, and the distance village bells you catch once in a while. And that small space where creativity resides? Like the heart of the Grinch, it grows. And grows, until it takes up all the space of all the other stuff you left behind.

View from the end of the track by Rebecca Stebbins

And as you slow down, matching your speed to the rhythms of real life, you realize you have hit your stride, and you work. With a passion, until you are tired and have to stop, and then it’s time for a nap, or a meal, or a walk, or a bath. The choices are few, and so they are easy to make. Easy choices reserve brain space for your creative pursuits, you think. You’re not wasting precious time on TV, or idle chitchat, or wondering what to tackle next. Your time feels more pure.

You wake up, and it happens again: simplicity. Except now there’s a complication: oh! There are chickens outside the door, and perhaps they would like a little treat. You go to look at all the different flowers in the garden and you see dinner there too, ready for picking. You come back inside and there’s a cat – and somehow, not by the markings but more by the attitude, you know which cat of the four has come to visit. You are settling in.

And one day it happens: you have to leave. And it is hard, and you are already starting to think about arriving on the train in Boussens and the long drive down that rocky track to come back.

http://bordeneuveretreat.com/