I came down around 7 am. Marthe slept, graceful, her head buried in the crook of her arm.
Time to heat up a coffee, I opened the creaking shutters of the dining room. In front of the house, the sun was scattering in specks that bounced off the puddles on the path. It was stormy that night...
The cat had posted itself in ambush behind the water pump. The garden was still covered with purple shadows waiting to disappear in the first light of daybreak.
The neighbor's dog risked a bark that broke the silence.
Then it was the turn of the rooster whose crowing sizzled in jerks taken up by a chattering echo.
This morning, I decided to go paint behind the church, on the road to Chalandos. I want to capture the movements of the grass, the undulations of the ears in the sun-drenched fields. I want to capture that rare moment when light reveals shapes and colors.
I know that Marthe will join me. She will cross father Matthieu's field then she will land like a dragonfly on the side of the road. So maybe I'll ask her to pose for me.
Later in the afternoon we will descend to the river bank. We will take the boat, near the worm-eaten wooden pontoon and we will let ourselves be carried by the light current, to the Médard farm. Marthe will snuggle up against me, I will tell her that I love her, she will smile at me...
© Fabrice Roy. Diary of a Country Painter. 2023
In his art history lectures, Fabrice Roy combines the past with the present, in a poetic and playful evocation of the French 19th century...
