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This summer I went back to France for a few weeks. Connecting with a loved place filled with happy memories is a bittersweet way of recharging. There is so much to embrace and to remember, so many books to flip through again and so many notebooks from the past to peruse.

I am still amazed at the patience I had to collect pictures from magazines and to do relevant compositions with them. This was way before Pinterest and though I don’t technically qualify as old, I still feel ancient with my decoupages. Those “carnets d’inspiration” were very useful as I committed an unforgivable sin: I came with very little art supply, figuring the place would be brimming with papers and pastels! But inks have dried out and no suitable equivalent was available. I tried to make some botanical inks but the pitiful attempts were very light and more frustrating than interesting.

So I turned to another play in the garden, photography. This is when you acknowledge yet again that Mother Nature is the best designer and the best artist there is. Nobody will ever match the exquisite combinations of colors or the intricate shapes inside the heart of a flower. I was in awe and in heaven. Add to that one storm or two and the apex of poetry is achieved with a water drop of a petal.

Poring over the few inspiration notebooks that made it through the many international moves, it was interesting to see that some themes were already emerging : colors, the frontier between dream & reality, the beauty of the female form and the interaction of mankind with nature.

Becoming an artist is a journey and it felt good to be able to reflect a bit. But next time, I will pack some ink bottles for sure!