Provençal bowl with mandarins, 5x5 oil $100, unframed, $150 in a big chunky frame

One of the joys of being a traveling artist is sharing the trip with friends like you. It’s such a thrill to let you see what I see through my paintings. Some of you have stopped by to see the paintings in person; some of you have to settle for the blog entries.

But with two of the interior paintings already sold, I’ve been at the easel creating more memories of my winter in Provence.

As I paint, I’m back there, myself.

Wine and Honey Bastide, 6x8 oil, $175 unframed, $245 framed

This little landscape was done on my first day painting en plein air. I never go out painting without a visitor or two. This day, both the owner and neighbor stopped by to check out my strange outdoor studio in the snow. I wish I had photos of the silly little turquoise Ford something-or-other with door flung open, my easel next to it and me painting in my get-up at this curve in the road. But the photo-fish that really got away was the owner of this bastide. He was a marvelous, craggy character: a Belgian ex-pat. The highest compliment he paid me was saying he thought I was a foreigner as well, by my accent. Thank you! I just couldn’t destroy that moment by asking if I could take his photo.

6x8 oil. Olive Grove in Snow $175 unframed, $245, framed

Here’s a little slice on Monfort in the wintertime. The town boasts olives, wine and water. The water of Monfort is bottled commercially, at the source. But Monfort’s real claim to fame, I was told by Pierre and Fabrice, is Joseph-Louis Lambot, the inventor of ferro-cement, which led to the development of reinforced concrete. Somehow, this fact explains why Monfort’s population is stable rather than seasonal, like so many Provençal towns. Wikipedia has confirmed this French fact about cement, which I took with a polite smile and nod in the conversation for three reasons. First, I was a guest. Second, was I really understanding the drift of things and finally, as much as I love the French, they do seem to have their own inventors of everything, from electricity to… to concrete!

As know-it-all adolescents, my mother would annoy us with her self-defensive warning that pride goeth before the fall. Having departed Monfort at 6:45, I drove down the Rue de la Republic sans faute toward the Aix Eurocar rental office an hour later, feeling pretty proud of myself. I had several hours left to drop off the car, walk five blocks to the train station and snatch a coffee and croissant. Problem: seeing the locked up Eurocar facade, I remembered I was to return the car at the train station. Lucky I had time to wind back.

Problem two: After circling about forty minutes, I discovered that there are two train stations in Aix and the one I needed was in a suburb, not around the corner. Feeling the pinch.

Problem three: As my francophile-artist friend, Cindy, says, French directions and road signs get you ninety percent of the way there. Deduct more for not catching avery word. After sweating more wrong turns, I arrived at the airport-sized train station and after one final bad turn down  a fireman-dedicated lane, handed over the car keys at 9:15. My unnerved and damaged self-esteem was consoled to still have ample time to buy a baguette sandwich for the train.

Paris has been a dream, granted a chilly one. I finally spent time at the Louvre and revisited my favorite artists at Musée Dorsay. Last night I reveled in a magical dream of new French friends saying goodbye: a Moulin Rouge version of the real goodbye I had shared with the waiter at Le Jardin d”Artemis, who announced to the French diners that I was his American artist friend.

Difficult to top that farewell, I’ll end the trip tonight after one last cold walk to the Seine and back, dining late in a tiny husband-wife restaurant around the corner, sating any sense left in my body, mind or soul that can possibly absorb another ounce of life. I may explode, but what a way to go!

Still a little chilly to paint, I picnicked on a small baguette, left over cheese and olive tapenade on the grounds, washing it down with some San Pellegrino. Too many hairpin turns and paintings to go before it would be wine time.

The afternoon proved to be cool but calm, with enough sunshine to enjoy painting at le Lac de Carcés. Evening gave way to a marvelous farewell french dinner prepared by Pierre.

6x8 oil, Lac de Carcés

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be back in Paris at my silly little hotel at Place d’Italie, where the wi-fi is capricious but a delightful patisserie is right around the corner. As much as I want to return to Jardin d’Artemis for dinner, I’m also tempted by the little place next door which specializes in couscous- as long as it’s not bio!

Lying here in bed, listening to the town wake up, I have a “make a wish” sense about the day. It’s a wistful sensation. Not just because my Winter in Provence is almost over and I need to choose how to spend my last day here, either. The greater heartache is this; as amazing as this time has been, I may never see this place again. It’s rather like a romance break-up… I did that once in eighth grade. Tried it in college but it backfired and I got married. Oops.

But with my wandering, adolescent, artist’s eye, there are more regions in this lovely country to see so I’m still playing the field. My next fling could be the Aquitaine, the Alps, the Auvergne,  southern Burgundy, or another round with my first love, Brittany.

Except there’s a place I’ve been dying to go: the Perigord with the river Dordogne. I’ve lusted after it for several years.

Each region, like people, has unique beauty and charm. And in France each has a gender, too. Way back whenever, most of these regions were baptized with the feminine article la: la Normandie, la Bretagne, la Provence, la Loire… But my next round with la France may be southwest through l’Auvergne(the gender’s in the closet with the apostrophe) to le Perigord, and even le Basque. Guilty, as charged.

Even when I return to la Provence some spring or fall, will it be Monfort and this charming cat, Luthier? It’s been a delight, but this blue-eyed  wanderer is a fickle fellow, easily seduced by the promise of the unseen vista waiting around the next bend. But brev, I’m staying in the moment. Sun’s up. I’ll shower,breakfast and paint today away. Tomorrow, I’ll be lost in the City of Light.

Do my thing. It’s all I can really do, anyway, but the little restaurants in town have hammered this one into me. Entering, I announce that I’m seul, alone,  and some nights the table for one turns into a restaurant for one, if you don’t count the owner’s dog gadding about(which I’m all about!). Or maybe six. A big night is twenty five, I’ve learned. Tables never turn. Unthinkable in a country where dining is sacrosanct.

Take my time. Rushing is over. I’ll make an effort to talk more slowly, savor the activity of the moment and not worry about what I have to do next. I’ve done enough of that for a couple lifetimes.

Simple is better. My art. My food. My relationships. Watching Pierre and Fabrice, both city boys who have settled in the country, live simply here in this house day to day has helped me clear my voice, so to speak. The things I’ve loved and love to do, I love more. The things I have to do, I’ve begun doing less grudgingly and more consistently. And the people I love, I can’t imagine living without.

Cherish the intimate. As much as I love New York City, driving to Cannet yesterday really taught me that that’s not who I am; it’s a divertisement. As beautiful as the sun, palms and ocean were, the people were rushing: maybe not American style. French style. Life’s tempo was definitely faster than andante, a walking tempo. I couldn’t wait to get “home”. I want to be able to walk through the rest of my life. And not just metaphorically, either. I’d love to leave the buggy in the barn and be walk(maybe bike) to the store, the bank, or a restaurant. I’m getting close. Part of it’s a matter of retraining myself.

Keep my business at home. The only time in my life when I felt  I had to go to work were the couple of years when I had a storefront away from home. I’ve loved having my studio at home. When the kids were growing up, I was there when they got home from school. I’d stop and snack with them, start dinner then go back and wrap things up in the pottery while they did homework. They’re grown, but that’s still my way of working.

Make a new start. The only way I see all this happening is to take a new approach to marketing. For years I did the cart and pony thing, traveling to art shows. When I was young(I hate writing those words) and did that successfully, there was no internet. New day, new blog. I’m hoping as people read about this silly artist’s life, they may become more inclined to want a slice of it. It will at least define my market! So here’s my plan: build this blog to the point I can start a Patois by Stebner art auction, like a certain Englishman in Provence. Sell one piece a day. He’s given me courage to regroup, keep it simple and be myself.

Thanks Provence.

8x10 oil, Le Chat Luthier

When I first arrived at Le Chat Luthier, I had the worst time figuring out how to open and close the shutters. It was the cremones that challenged me: those amazing mechanical floor to ceiling bar and latch systems which not only seal the inside shutters closed, but the entire to-the-floor windows, as well. Like today’s computers, they work amazingly well if you know how to operate them and just like computers, it’s almost hopeless if you don’t. But once I caught onto them, I had to train myself which direction the bifold shutters folded back. French origami. Trickier you might expect, until you’ve been wrenching them open and closed twice a day all your life. And it must be done vigilantly according to my art historian friend,  Laura Gelfand. The French are adamant about the shutters more out a residual medieval fear of unhealthy air currents in the house, courants d’air, (remember the mistral?) than a desire for privacy.

My natural skill set is somewhere between cremones and computers. I’m neither a member of generation x,y or z. I’m one of the last of the baby boomers. Second of four children that issued from a war romance. I can instinctively drag a space heater around or remember to armor my clothes in winter like my adult kids clack around on a keyboard. And now  that I’m just getting the hang of this sly Luthier’s front door lock and his romantic cremones, it’s gonna be time to leave.

Brev (French street talk I learned for something like “in short”, “moving on” or “cut!”), I’m driving to Cannet on the Mediterranean to visit a muse, Pierre Bonnard. Unfortunately he won’t be there. He died in 1947. But his quaint seaside home there has been exploded into a 21st century museum dedicated to his works. Somehow he managed to create amazing paintings while bombs burst, before babies boomed and way before laptops lost wi-fi. I’m even taking the back roads instead of the auotroute and stop by the old-fashioned street market in Lorgues on the way and snatch a pique-nique and paint by the sea. I could get used to that real fast- Comme d’habitude

Pushing 12:30 today, I was passing through the only nondescript town of the day on my way to heaven, when I realized I might want to think about lunch. Wintertime in Provence, the window of opportunity for essentials like eating, grocery shopping and banking is limited. At this point I have to brag that I have a reputation, at least amongst an audience of two, for having a keen sense about unlikely good places to eat, whether it be on North Hill or some truck stop in southern Brittany.

So back to the nondescript town on Salerne(not SalernO, as in Italy). Paying attention to little but road signs, I was breezing through town watching for destination markers, thinking I’d be having some heavenly feast on the mountaintop, when I passed this incredible work of kitsch…Having passed it, I did what my mother never would have done, TURNED BACK! I thought, “If you don’t, you’ll always wonder what was behind those golden gates”. And I’m embarrassed to say, low these many years after her departure, I’m still rebelling against her rigid, maternal taboos. “Besides”, I thought to myself, “food in those beautiful villages up there will be expensive,anyway”. This, as our friend, Valerie would say, could be the “real deal”. And besides, the sign said “bio”, French for organic. So there.

As I opened the door, a surprised, plain yet pleasant face greeted me in the dark. The fact that there was only one light burning and the puzzled look on the man’s face threw me for a moment, made me stammer-French if I could have lunch. The shocked, diner-deprived patron, led his customer de jour to a table close to the kitchen, and as I sat down,  he wheeled one of those oil-filled, portable radiators next to my table. I mean next to my table. All through lunch I wondered if the soles on my shoes were melting.

In this dark, strange room that looked part restaurant, part grandmother’s kitchen, part library and part play room, he rattled out the plat de jour: no written menu and just two choices to be made. Three if you included dessert or no. Salad or soup and fish or some meat I didn’t understand, even after two repetitions. Not wanting meat anyway, I ordered the fish.

Soup arrives. I’m sitting in the dark, glowing in the light of  my self-content at a secret find. Spooning my potage of carrots and cauliflower(or was it potato?), I practiced emitting the gastronomic groans of satisfaction which I heard the Italian lady make two nights previously. I gleamed, dreaming about the fish course to come.

When it arrived, my heart went momentarily arrhythmic. It looked almost delicious, but a little too healthy and not at all French. This is coming from a fairly organic kind of guy. But this looked über-rganic. Straight from the source. Here we go from plate back to front: the big roasted bicolor carrots weren’t bad, though not the delicate little ones that the French love to serve, strangely placed in the middle, rather than front of the plate, was the fish smothered in diced onions(a la Waffle House), then downstage of it all was the driest enchilada-rolled, whole wheat looking crêpe-ish sort of thing I’d ever seen(somewhere along the line the Provençal have decided the Bretons are exotic), filled with big green beans and a few red peppers sans sauce. Dirt dry. No haricots vertes? My ooos skipped the aaahs and turned directly into ughs.

I escaped dessert by a close call, settled for coffee and snickered at my lead-stomached self as I mused, “Maybe my mother was right, after all”.

As kids we were taught that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But life’s never a straight line and neither is an adventure. But dangerous things, single lanes and blind curves. With the first you can be hit head on and with the second, you have no idea if, what or when disaster might happen.

Today, it was to warm up to a sunny38 degrees. Even warmer the rest of the week. With the weather gods satisfied, it was time to get the buggy out of the barn and hit the town. Or in this case, country, high in the mid-Var, almost to the Grand Canyon of France. I had about 6 villages to see and everything in between; everything includes lots of sleeping, snowy vineyards, rocky, red cliffs and river valleys. Each town I visited wound me a little higher in elevation until at last I reach my summit, Tourtours, listed as one of “the most beautiful villages in France.”

It’s nicknamed The Village in the Sky for good reason.

It’s nicknamed “The Village in the Sky” for good reason, but it’s true name is a conundrum. Tour in French can be several things, A feminine la tour is a turn or trip of most any sort, but a masculine le tour, is, no surprise, a tower(back to the obelisk). So Tourtours, could be a double turn, a double tower or tower of the towers, or maybe even a turn to a tower. I’ve made up all these possibilities, but any are a pro pos.

Getting to this heavenly city is a constant series of blind turns, one-way passes and one lane bridges climbing higher and higher through pine forests on rocky precipices. Risky business, just like life. Returning, I got to thinking about how, as much as the unknown can unnerve us, the real catastrophes in my life have rarely come out of nowhere, blind-sided. I might have polished my rosy colored glasses and ignored them until they beat me over the head, but risk taking has rarely been disastrous. On the contrary, taking chances has brought me to new heights in my life: up the mountain, expanded my horizons and led me to those pleasant places where I could finally sneak the car off the road and paint another dream, before the sun set.

Pierre thought I was prudent to settle for a walk rather than venture out in the car, since snow had dusted the town overnight. Two routes were recommended which would take me through the medieval sector to good views of the town and valley. On my descent, I met a policeman barricading the street. My french comprehension choked at the thought of having to answer a policeman, but I finally muttered out where I was staying and that was enough information for him to realize that this pitiful foreigner wasn’t trying to drive into town.

But he and the men shooting off guns all morning had piqued my curiosity. Following the blocked street, I arrived at an ancient church just in time to see St. Blaise toppling out the low-slung portal, guarded by huntsmen, a brave, banner-bearing lady and a petite band of provençale-clad pilgrims. St. Blaise be praised, whoever you are! I was in Patois heaven. With the rest of us mortals in tow, the parade stopped most every block of town, which amounts to less times than you have fingers, to sing their song and shoot their rifles. Then back to the church and put the good man to rest for another year.

Having told my tale, the light is filtering into my room just about enough to try a little painting. With my newly adopted patron saint watching over my shoulder, what more could I hope for?