Arts Portfolio

A friend of mine, Trevor Morris, writes articles for the Dorset Echo. He lives here in France and has written articles almost weekly about the trials, tribulations and joys of living in France. He puts a very humouristic slant on everything, including my art! He intends putting all of these articles in a book and this will be published in the next couple of months. He has written the following article about artists in France in general but includes information about me. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Cathy Savels, www.cathysavels.com

Not so long ago, wealthy families who cast out their black sheep put them on a ship France. Once the ne’er-do-well landed he would make his way to Paris, find himself a garret, buy a set of paintbrushes, and starve to death. Well, in fact it would be a race to see whether the starvation would get to him before the absinthe had a chance to rot away his brain and disintegrate his vital organs.

This was all very noble. It got rid of unwanted relatives, kept a few backstreet cafes in business, and even produced the odd bit of artwork into the bargain. Things have changed. It seems that you no longer have to come from a fabulously wealthy background to become an artist. Anybody can do it, even the working classes. One thing has not changed. They still come to France.

Their reasons are many - the fabulous scenery, the light, the spare building that could be converted into a studio if only there was an artist to fill it. I have lost track of the number of times that I have stood looking at a beautiful but quite useless huge area of barn, and listened while the owner has told me about his dream of opening an art school.
If every one of these dreams came to fruition there would be approximately two schools for every potential pupil. There are so many artists, and potential artists, flocking to this area that some villages count 50 per cent of their population as being artists. Some hamlets are closer to the 100 per cent mark.

This does of course lead to some colourful characters. I have seen one version of the standard cape-clad, fedora-wearing archetype with a huge booming voice; he was an American. I know an Irishman from the lower reaches of society, who will only paint scenes from the local town of Gaillac. He will not contemplate painting anywhere else. When pressed upon his future plans after he has painted every building in the town, he thinks that he may have to start all over again.

I know a Belgian girl who paints string. If she can’t actually get hold of any string, she will paint something else and make it look like string. She also paints black-eyed peas, corks, lichen, and anything else that is intricate, time-consuming, painstaking and likely to turn any sane person into an axe-wielding psychopath.

These people are actual, genuine, struggling artists, desperate to succeed in their chosen field, and make a living. A less generous person might see them as desperate to not have to get a proper job. They are, of course, accompanied, and outnumbered by the droves of middle class dabblers, who find themselves with too much money, too much time, too little purpose in life, and too little talent. Any trip to a local art show will yield an embarrassment of riches…. eccentric perspective, wobbly lines, poorly-mixed colours, and all at a vibrant price.

What place is there for these people in the local economy, in a country where there is a dearth of people to maintain and repair things? I suppose if you can’t find anybody to fix that crack in your wall, you could cover it with a picture. If your trousers fell down and you needed a piece of string, you could always unpick a painting. What price art?

You can find many more of Trevor’s articles on www.vivelarenovation.com.