I watched a wonderful program on Matisse last night.  It made me realise that my new series ‘stripped naked’ was indeed a good idea.  Matisse started out doing relatively constrained and traditional works, paintings that fitted in to what was expected of him at that time.  It wasn’t until he had bowel cancer that he…

We were going a little stir crazy yesterday as we’ve spent much time working. Joe thought that we should get out and just down to the lake we have near to us. It was around -10C so we put our thermals on, 3 pairs of socks, wellington boots, scarf, hat and gloves. This would normally…

The snow really is coming down hard now here in the Auvergne. We’ve run out of wood and it’s impossible to get the wheelbarrow up the hill with all this snow. Looks like we’ll have to carry a few logs at a time. We should have been more prepared I guess. We just hope the…

In the past, I’ve always thrown away paintbrushes that had gone hard. Even solvents didn’t seem to work that well and I didn’t like the cost to the environment using these. I’ve just recently found this article which says that using ivory soap gets your brushes back to their former glory. It’s very simple –…

Finally we are now seeing the first frosts here in the Auvergne, France.  We are surrounded by many extinct volcanoes which are now topped with snow, like little Christmas puddings topped with delicious icing. This is what’s inspired my little Treasure chest of goodies. Hope you don’t feel too cold! Enjoy! You can visit these…

I wanted to take a whole series of photos from around our home showing the amazing aray of autumnal colours. It’s been raining non-stop for several days now so I’ve not been able to go out armed with the camera. I still intend to do so, in the hope the trees won’t lose ALL their…

When selling online, I often come across fellow artisans who also work and live in France. It’s always lovely to make new acquaintances and see what people are making. It’s just a shame this is quite a large country so that we can’t just pop in for coffee and a chat. Here are some of…

I’ve always had a fascination for birds and bird houses. Ever since I was a small girl, my dad would take me to go bird watching at the estuary. I had a little seat on my dad’s cross bar of his bike and we would cycle to the coast. There we would have to climb…

I’ve been itching to get back in the studio lately to paint. I often have fairly long breaks between painting and find myself mentally taking a different road. Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more abstract. I’ve resisted this for a long time, I like realism and conditioning always told me that there was more…

I’ve not had much training as an artist but I did take a few courses over several years. My very first one was botanical watercolours and this totally sparked my interest in painting. I have been playing around with botanical subjects ever since. In botanical painting you literally spend hours staring at your subject and…