#56 / Melon de Cavaillon

#56 / Melon de Cavaillon

Cavaillon (my local town) is famous for its melons. There is a chef here called Jean-Jaques Prévôt who is melon mad. He cooks with melon, he serves a MacPrevot with melon, he paints melons, he paints using melons, he exhibits melons, he talks about melons on the television and on the radio. The Pizzeria run by Ludo and Bertrand called L’Aiglon (best Pizza in the Luberon by the way) features a Prevot-inspired melon centric Pizza designed to celebrate the sweet bright orange flesh of this sun soaked fruit.

This time a year ago my default method for checking to see if a melon was ripe, was to sniff the bottom of it. That was until I was told that if I pushed the stork with my thumb a little, it would break off easily if the fruit was ripe.  We bought this melon from the road side shack five minutes drive from us and to check for us, the guy pushed the stork to break it and said c’est bon pour manger ce soir.  

#52 / Cerises de Provence

#52 / Cerises de Provence

I was going to post this last night but the image was so poor I had to wait for better light to photograph it…

Here is a small percentage of the 1.6kg of cherries we have been given over the weekend from our neighbours M et Mme Nuti. ‘Pour le petit’ they say as they hand it through the archway that divides our properties. Sebastian is delighted. ‘Merci’ he says gracefully as he receives this latest gift. We exchange pleasantries and chat about the weather and how impossible it is to do anything between 10am and 6pm because of the heat and strength of the sun then we all bolt back into our cool houses.

#29 / Portuguese Pear

#29 / Portuguese Pear

My son was off on a walk through the Luberon today with his school so after packing him off with his packed lunch and suncream, I had a little more time to paint this morning that I usually would have had.

I thought I’d try another pear with this coloured sheet of paper behind it to look at the relationship between colours on the canvas.    

#28 Pair

 

#28 / Pair

Yet again this morning was spent doing things other than painting. Our neighbour had requested some measurements of boundaries be taken and my signature was required on numerous sheets of paper (the famous French love of paperwork in action again). So another quick painting from just after lunch…

I received a letter this morning from the Mayor of our local village informing me that my bid to open a market stall on Wednesday mornings had been successful! So I’m very excited and am now shopping around for gazebos which are sturdy enough to hold off the Mistral! Any tips would be gratefully received! Also, if anyone is coming to Provence this Summer then please pop by and say hello!

#23 / Kiwi fruit

#23 / Kiwi fruit

My son doesn't like eating eggs for breakfast but he does happlily enjoy the odd Kiwi fruit from time to time. Unfortunately for him, he didn't get to eat this one as I had whisked it into the studio to paint. He does also enjoys eating the croissants and pain au chocolats that are so commonly available and happily settled for them as an alternative on the understanding that next time he'd eat the Kiwi and I'd paint the croissants...  

#14 / Clementine

I had a tutor at Heatherley’s called Susan Wilson, who during our two or three week long projects would read to us in her gentle Kiwi accent as we painted. A little Don Quixote… some Tolkien, I think we also had a bit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (much easier going having it read than having to read it oneself!). There was also music and if memory serves me correct, she put a CD of Hawaiian music on... very calming. I heartily subscribe to the idea that listening to something can disengage the analytical part of the brain and free it up to paint more instinctively. Many artists are absolutely against the idea of playing music while you work, but it seems to work for me. So after not listening to anything for the fist thirteen paintings, I put my phone into my studio’s MacGyver speaker system and pressed ‘shuffle’.