'Aller au fil de l'eau' means to go with the flow. It is also, appropriately, the name of the café in the small French village where I live. On the terrace, the atmosphere is relaxed, life seems to mosey along no faster than the river that slips lazily by. In spring and early summer, conversations are often accompanied by a chorus of croaking frogs. Creating this blog is some kind of commitment to take brush or pen or pencil in hand every day and make art. As Julia Cameron says: "...creativity is not a marathon event that we must gird ourselves for, whacking off great swaths of life as we know it to make room for it. Creativity is not aberrant, not dramatic, not dangerous. If anything, it is the pent-up energy of not using our creativity that feels that way". Not making art is like trying to stop the flow of the river. I surrender to the flow and watch where it takes me.

Friday, 27 August 2010

Ceci n'est pas un piment

The upcoming group exhibition at the Espace d'Art is on the theme of Surrealism, Dada and Fluxus. My painting is a take on René Magritte's infamous Ceci n'est pas une pipe which features a realistic rendition of a pipe suspended in mid-air with those words painted underneath. The idea being that, rather than an actual pipe that you can fill with tobacco and smoke, it is in fact a mere representation of a pipe.

As followers of my blog will already know, chillies have recently become a favourite subject of mine. So while it is not a particularly original idea (just search Google Images for Ceci n'est pas...), I thought it was rather neat that the French word for 'chilli' starts with the same two letters as 'pipe' which gave me the added dimension of a play on words.


Acrylic on canvas board, 41x33cm 
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3 comments:

  1. MD27 August 2010 at 04:09

    Superb painting Judith. I love it. I can almost smell and taste the chilli pepper. Vu que ceci n'est pas un piment, il en a l’air quand même!!!
    MD
    x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Judith Alsop Miles27 August 2010 at 05:54

    Thanks for your lovely comments as always. It was fun to do and I feel I've achieved what I set out to do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ovson18 September 2010 at 05:19

    Very fine work.

    ReplyDelete

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