Waiting for a Baby

Insomnia

When Manuela Luchtmeijer and her husband decided to adopt a child, the long process of paperwork and waiting began. And so too began her response as an artist to the emotional, raw energy produced by waiting and wanting to know if they would be approved to be parents. She couldn't sleep, so she painted. And when their bab(ies) arrived, she conceived of a series to commemorate this time.

Sixteen out of the twenty-six canvasses in the show that closed here last night are black, and indeed, the name of the show is "The Colors of Black." Out of Manuela's insomnia came a body of work that plays with that "color," "the perfect absorber of light," symbol of darkness and depression that goes deep into it and comes out a triumphant play of movement and a meditation of texture.

Some of the black canvasses have blue in them. Indigo adds hope and the swirling strokes in one tryptich called "Insomnia" recall a view of the earth from space. And some of paintings, even though they read "black" have a mixture of many colors and layers of oil that took months to dry, she says, and I noticed living with them here for two weeks, are ever-changing depending on the light. The built-up paint creates a "relief" - peaks and points of paint that is like a topographical map.

The second part of the show is called "Annunciation," or the announcement, in Manuela and Thomas's case the acceptance of their application to adopt a child. In English, a euphenism for pregnancy is "expecting a baby." In French, "attendre un enfant," means literally, "waiting for a baby." Their waiting was rewarded when they learned that they were to be the parents of twins!

And so they travelled to meet their new babies and bring them home to Paris. Manuela jokes that even though her insomnia theoretically ended, she had to be awake nights with the twins and so she still was sleep-deprived. But very grateful.

The third part of the show is named "Madonna," and differs from the rest of the show in that they are figurative and done in acrylic. To express the last part of the series and the feelings that were so overwhelming, she felt the need to work more quickly and moved away from abstraction to a more impulsive way to depict her new reality.

Pictured: "l'Immaculée Conception," a tour de force of red, black and depth and a sly take on what adoption is. This conception was immaculate, there was no original sin involved, nothing but pure motives here and this purity shone through in Manuela's face when she told me her story when I visited her atelier three Fridays ago.

The twins, a boy and a girl, are almost three years old now. They speak French and Dutch and came with their French grandmother to the vernissage, recognized their mother's paintings and enjoyed the attention they got from the crowd. They won't understand til they grow up that unborn they were the muse of their mother's best work to date.

"l'Annunciation," 120 cm. x 150 cm., oil on canvas. Price on request.

http://manuelaluchtmeijer.com

In a friend's kitchen

Interiors

Louisa Dusinberre came to Paris from London in the 1980's and started to paint in the mid-nineties after a career in communication. Her show here chez Grace opens this week and is so named because the subjects of her canvasses are her kitchen and those of her friends, her own studio, and her husband's collection of tea tins and pots.

Louisa also does portrait work - she paints her friends and her husband, her mother's garden in the south of England and the details of where they live.

Now that her paintings are hung, I understand more where she is coming from. She wanted, in her own words, "to bring to the viewer an emotive understanding of her environment." And her canvasses have a glowy warmth that is like a swallow of a very nice Cognac.

The first two shows of hers which I saw (at the Visconti Gallery in the 6th arrondissement and Artstarte in 7th) were of outsize people, children and pets (the two Yorkshire terriers of a mutual friend).And so infatuated was I with a portrait she did of her mother, and also a self-portrait she did (very dark!) I sat for Louisa who produced a painting that I am very fond of and which will make its public debut at her opening here. (See "Lady of a Portrait," an earlier post.)

Pictured: "Fetish Kitchen II," 2005, acrylic on canvas, 80 cm. x 100 cm. €500.

Unnatural History

Dead Monsters and Bleeding Objects - II

The monsters of Thomas Suire's show are a collection of animal heads at once whimsical, comical and fierce. Each creature is mounted as a trophy with a detailed description of its provenance written in the style of natural history. His droll look at man's devastation of the animal world is only slyer and funnier knowing that many of these animals only exist(ed) in his imagination.

There are thirteen in all (three were on display here in July, and it's great to have them back!) Pictured at right is "Calamar dentu."

Thomas's description:

"Cette espèce de la mer Méditerranée, disparu depuis une soixantaine d'années, a été découverte pendant la seconde guerre mondiale par des résistants français. L'animal, qui avait déchiqueté le gouvernail de leur barque, fut aussitôt appelé "poisson-traître", ou encore "poisson-collabo". Il devint l'objet d'une traque incessante, et disparût dans les années qui suiverint la libération de Paris."

Loosely translated:

Toothed Squid

This species native to the Mediterranean Sea, now extinct for about sixty years, was discovered during the Second World War by some members of the French Resistance. This animal, which tore their boat's rudder to pieces, was immediately dubbed "Traitor Fish," or even "Collaborator Fish."

It was hunted mercilessly and disappeared in the years following the liberation of Paris."

Others in this unlikely menagerie include a spider, a shark-like animal,, a slug, a rat, a walrus-like animal, an anteater-like animal, and a snake/cat-like animal.

(Photo courtesy of Douglas Brodoff.)

Price on request.

On view till October 31, 2009.

Just around the corner

How I met Geneviève Flament

I was having a drink on the rue des Abbesses with photographer Robert Ogle, who lives just a few blocks from me in a charming out-of-the-way passage that is charming and countrified. He rolled a cigarette, eyed a young blonde at the next table, and asked for a light. Her companion was an older gentleman who turned out to be her father. We four got to talking: when I revealed that I show artists in my home gallery, the young girl, Juliette, piped up, "My mother is an artist!"

Uh-oh. That's what they all say.

But then, did I not come to show an excellent painter named Monique Hospital in the early days of chez Grace just by the persistence of her daughter Florence who came to the vernissages and each time implored me to look at her mother's work. She emailed me, sent the link to her mom's website, and invited me to her atelier.

Persistence counts.

And passion. So Juliette and her mom showed up at the next vernissage that rolled around, the group show in April, and the next one too. I think I am too influenced now by Facebook, and think that I can judge a book by its cover, but these days more and more I am taken in by a person's looks. And this woman had the sweetest face, with sincere dark eyes and a gentleness about her. And a humility that I found very appealing next to my own monstrous ego.

Last week I made it over to her studio. It is just around the corner. She showed me her latest paintings and explained that she will be included in a book that will come out next September. I had pretty much already made up my mind to include her in the next show, but seeing her dreamy meditations on nature made me feel like I was walking on air the way back to my place.

Pictured: "Cascade," acrylic on canvas. 130 cm. x 81 cm.

Every picture tells a story...Part I

"One layer takes one hour. There are typically twenty layers per canvas, so that's twenty to twenty-five hours. The bigger oils take longer - I work on them over six months."

Laleña L. Vann was answering my question "How long does it take to do one canvas?" And the layers she was referring to is her writing of a story, in French. One canvas, one story. Except that it is a secret story, because the overpainting makes the writing finally illegible. The word for spelling in French is "orthographe." So might we call her painting "orthographics"?

I asked Laleña if she feels gratitude toward France. "Absolutely! I came to France for the first time at age 21 after graduating from university. I toured Europe after that but always wanted to come back to France. Life got in the way, I got married, got divorced, and at age 58 I found myself realizing I could go and that it was now or never. Things really opened up for me then. I had always wanted to be here..."

Although she loves Paris, Laleña settled in Collioure where it is warmer and smaller and more intimate. (She is originally from Santa Cruz, CA.) And after her show here chez Grace, she has been invited by the exhibition space in Collioure called L'Ancien Mairie to show her paintings July 9 - August 9, 2009.

The painting pictured above is titled "Le Tibet [Tibet]" is acrylic on canvas, measures 50 x 50 cm, and was painted in 2007. (Price on request.)

Laleña's show here runs from May 16-30. See more of her work on her website www.llvann.com


(to be continued)