Art

Yesterday, we recovered from our day of sunshine to return to Mistral. The wind blew all day along, white-topped waves came at the shore, not rolling but pushed like a wall of many colors. I tried to name the shades of blue, but was rendered inarticulate: light blue, dark blue, deep-blue, turquoise, greenish-blue..and then what? Sea blue? Picasso had it easier, he could mix colors on a palate and throw them on canvas.
I accepted years ago that I would ever be able to paint or draw. Mrs. Mehta at Fort Convent had given up on me. I did not fail art because no one ever did; my report cards show 40 out of 100, the bare minimum to pass. I went through school without significant art instruction, only a sense of despair and failure.
In our days in Valbonne, I stumbled upon a flier for class that taught Mandala art. It’s easy to draw with compass and ruler geometric patterns and color them, something I could learn to do competently.  I could never find that class but instead I discovered Marlene’s atelier. When I went in to ask about Mandalas, I met Marlene herself and Annie Jaqueline who teaches abstract painting on Friday mornings. I signed up for four sessions. Abstract art doesn’t have to look like the object that inspired the work; the less a rectangle resembles a tree, the better. The most extreme example is Mondrian, all squares painted in primary colors to depict houses, forests, tulips, windmills and Mistral, as seen through the lens of his tortured soul.
In our first class, we mixed colors and dabbed away on art paper. In the second class, we advanced to drawing what we saw on the street outside the studio. I drew a house, its doorway and its windows, flower pots in the windows, a tree beside the outer wall of the house. Annie told me to paint in any color what interested me in my drawing. Soon I had a red-brown roof, a pink door and green-blue windows and nothing could stop me. A classmate, Muriel, remarked that my work reminded her of Matisse, the windows of the eyes on a face. That was all the encouragement I needed. My finished piece was exhibited along with the work of my classmates at the Mairie of Valbonne at its First International Abstract Art Exhibition.
Imitation is not the highest form of flattery, theft is. My painting was missing at the end of the exhibition. My children think that it might have ended up in the trash, my husband hopes that the paper was recycled. I survived Ms. Mehta and Fort Convent, these unkind comments didn’t hurt me. I reported the missing art to the local police who launched an area-wide search that, alas, has to stop at the limits of French jurisdiction at borders of Italy and Monaco. All they have found so far are some previously undiscovered work by Matisse but I remain optimistic.