Catherine Stock's Blog, page 21

Simon's Cat

An odd experience

Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.

Rignac under snow

Could be a Christmas card...lovely from afar, but pretty chilly in reality. I took this shot on the road down from Roumegouse. As I gingerly made my way down the hill, I passed a couple waiting for the tow truck. Their car lay on its side in a ditch. Pretty slithery conditions. Thabo and Sam having a blast.

Red Lady

I am starting a series of large paintings loosely based on sketches from the Monday life drawing evening. I haven't painted for myself for years, and find it strangely constraining, after railing for years against editors and art directors who demanded changes in my illustrations. Perhaps I need a weight/force to work against, and feel strangely adrift without it.

Anyway I have started, and strangely enough, seem to be picking up from where I left off at art school decades ago: a fascination...

The Opium Den

Every night Sam disappears at about 10:30 or 11. I used to get in my car and try to find him. Once or twice I found him chilling his heels in a cage in Rocamadour or Gramat. He has chewed his way through three leashes and two collars. I replace the tag with my phone number on his collar very other day, though this is hardly necessary as everyone within a 20 kilometer radius of Rignac seems to know Sam now from his "Perdu!" posters.

Who knows where he goes but he is home in the morning, once...

Mysterious bearer of goodies in Rignac

About a month ago, I found this little rose bush, wrapped up and be-ribboned, and a homemade nut cake on my kitchen table. Still don't know how they got there, but a neighbour told me last week that the same thing happened to her a few years ago, and she still doesn't know who our secret benefactor is...

Watch the Bill Moyers segment on Afghanistan- 11/20/09

Sharing the limelight with a turkey

Every now and then, Thanksgiving falls on my birthday, November 26. Such was the case this year.

Rounded up a few friends and told them that, in traditional Thanksgiving style, they needed to bring something for the meal. Ended up with imported cranberries and roast potatoes from Bayge's garden, mushrooms collected by Marco, and a handmade pumpkin pie from Elisabeth and a collection of fabulous music from Franck. I splurged on a pot of foie gras spread on slivers of toasted homemade raisin ...

Rocamadour Redux?

One of the local scenes my students enjoy painting most is the view across the valley of Rocamadour. However after about ten years, I have become rather bored with painting this scene.

Last summer I had a lovely student who painted s-o-o s-l-o-w-l-y that I scolded her that if she didn't loosen up she wouldn't finish anything. Yesterday, about four months after she started the picture, she sent me this breathtaking landscape. Bravo Mucella!

Weekend in the hookie

Sam has disappeared before, and once the police told me to collect him from a cell in Rocamadour, but this time he was gone for three days, the police hadn't had any reports about his finding, and no one was responding to the posters I had put up. Yesterday I took to my bed. Sam tends to lie in the middle of the road, and this is the middle of hunting season after all. But just before turning out the light for the night, I checked my cellphone, which for some reason tends to turn itself off....