First fire.

Big storm last night with violent thunder and lightning and copious amounts of rain. It's still raining and although it's not cold I'm staying in beside the fire!

Raining.

View from the studio - France.


Yesterday it was so hot we went swimming in the lake to cool off. Today it's cooler, raining and the sky is misty but I'm working on a painting which is full of sunshine. I know the weather will gradually change this month with colder mornings and evenings but my head will still be full of sunny images well into the Autumn.

A small mouse has been sharing my kitchen for some weeks now. He hides behind the woodpile and darts across the floor. A friend managed to capture him once and put him outside - I hope he escaped! It's only a field mouse and very sweet but I bought some poison in the end. Yesterday I found two small bodies in the middle of the kitchen floor. Not nice and very sad but I had no way of knowing if "he" was really a solitary friend or if a whole family had decided to settle here. I wasn't very keen on that.

The Tower across the road.

The Tom Jones moment has passed and thoughts of South Wales fade as the sun gets stronger and the colours on the palette become sharper and brighter.
I'm back to Stan Getz and occasionally Django Reinhardt but most of all now I rely on the radio when I'm working.

The work is slow because each painting is taking me longer to finish but I'm quite content to keep going! The colour of the sky changes constantly with a variety of different shades of blue and the warm grey limestone walls never fail to attract me. Then there's always that tower just across the road that I can't seem to escape from.