Avenda's Blog

Start painting; whoever you are reading this blog that means you. Paint, do art, move colour round a surface with a brush, your fingers, an old credit card, it doesn’t matter how or what. If you haven’t done it since you were five then so much the better. Paint on a piece of cardboard, use the inside of the cornflakes box, find the children’s crayons. No excuses. Need something to paint? Then look. Painting teaches you to look. Look at the shadows falling on a face. Look at the infinite colours in a cloudy sky. Looking is good.

What many people don’t understand is that the result, the ‘art’, is not the important thing; it is the time spent reflecting on your soul. Not actively … you don’t try reflecting, it just happens in the quiet. And sometimes that sliver of soul wedges itself into the work. Find time. You only have a lifetime, so don't waste it.

 

Ready to paint at last. The skies are vast, the seas inspirational and the clear light is everything an artist could wish for. My senses are ajangle.

Not sure how all this might change my style but I am impatient to find out.

I can hardly believe it but we are here, where the estuary peeks out at the Atlantic, Talmont sur Gironde. Everything is upside down after the move but we have found some major component parts of Atelier Avenda and the painting studio will soon be ready to go.

The house and studio are better than I had dared hoped ... how come we go back to the shop five times before we decide to invest in a pair of winter boots yet buy a house after just one visit ... fundamentally better, but in great need of some tlc. The same may be said of many of us. So, I can see the sea from the bedroom, but also 180 degrees from the other side of the house, out of the french windows of the study.

My wish list was sea, or light flooding through windows, or courtyard garden, or balcony, or french windows or veranda. I have it all. Thank you my guardian angels. You certainly worked overtime on this one.

A last look at the first Atelier Avenda, the small gallery we have lived and loved in the town square, under the medieval stone arches of the French bastide town called Monségur. But since atelier means workshop there will soon be another.

For a few months it may be more virtual than visitable but we will post the news here and at www.avendaburnellwalsh.com as soon as Atelier Avenda is up and running at Talmont sur Gironde.

In the corner of a small square, at the centre of a small town, in the midst of the Entre Deux Mers, tucked away in south west France, that is where you have always found us. It was like somewhere over the rainbow but with slightly more in the way of public transport. It was, and still is, beautiful. The only mandolin and guitar duets were mere whispers of echoes in your own mind ... so that was up until 20 October 2009. Now all is changed.

Atelier Avenda is moving on to Talmont sur Gironde, an idyll peering out at the Atlantic Ocean from a small bend at the opening of the Gironde Estuary. Find Royan and cycle south a few kilometres.

We have stayed with the bastide theme, mostly because we love it, so this one was built by Edward the First of England. We think he chose well.

What have we done now? What we started to do, was to buy another beautiful gallery in Monségur ... but our dream house purchase has been delayed. In the meantime our house/home/atelier has sold with a moving date of 20 October. Luckily we always keep a spare house for emergencies so we are not exactly homeless. Soooooo ... watch this space. Our temporary mail address is:

La Ribière, 87600, Vayres, FRANCE

+33 (0)6 79 35 75 21.

With impeccable timing our email address has been revised for us by our wonderful broadband provider (to avend@sfr.fr) so we truly hope you are able to find us during our short sojourn and that any message you send does not fall between the cracks, as it were.

Have embarked on a new series of figurative paintings and am rather liking it so far. These are barley clad, unfinished, unpainted, looking out at the voyeur looking in ... my unpainted ladies.

Time to get painting before the summer really hits. The Friday markets are starting to bubble again after a winter of basics, and the night markets are being planned. Jazz too is just around the corner. I can feel tempus fidgetting.

We are finally back in France, having travelled around more this year than we had intended ... but it is good to see home again. We have a new range of cards from the latest pieces of art, printed for us in the UK, and we think they are beautiful. The great plan of painting all winter ... ready for the season ... doesn’t seem to have worked so far. Must get the atelier up and running.

All excitement in little Monségur. We have UB40 coming to give a concert in May. No one is sure why but the town is on the map at last.

It was 16 degrees yesterday, sun shining and dog walking with a neighbour while auntie beeb informed me of snow in blighty. I’m sure I didn’t dream it.

But now the drizzle has set in and the stove is roaring. Easy come, easy go.