Well we're at the end of the season here in Talmont and now that we have the time to come up for air, I can see all the things which haven't been done, including updating the website.

To all those people who said it was a strange match to sell Teddy Bears alongside the art, we can only say that we are becoming known as the Teddy Bear Shop. Should I be worried by that?

We found a supplier of traditional looking, jointed and dressed bears which have flown out the door. People just love them. We have a register of where they have all gone to and one dark night in Winter, beside the fire and with a glass of wine, I will upload a map so you can see where they have gone. Each of them left with their certificate showing how they were 'Tepid Explorers', what they found on the beach and their date of birth.

Photos to follow and once we have the shipping worked out, we will have the Talmont Teddies available to buy via this site.

A bientot

Avenda

Atelier Avenda has started to sell Teddy Bears alongside the art. You might think that they are strange bedfellows but it gives a whole new dimension to the gallery.

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.