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| Flower Cherry Blossom Branch Over the Garden |
12" x 16" framed size
$120 including shipping
Friday, March 21, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Icons
It broke my heart to leave her behind. We had worked together, gotten into trouble together, worked things out when things got a bit tricky, and had a lot of fun whenever we headed out. Tensie was her name. She was my 1951 Chevrolet pickup truck, an iconic image of America. Leaving her out of our moving container was just about the hardest thing I did when we left Vermont, well, her and a whole lot of friends and family as well.
Then one day late last summer there was an add on our local internet “find it” list. There was no reason for me to open that ad, but I did. I called Tom over to the computer to look at the trouble I was thinking about getting into and he said, “Well you have to at least give them a call.” For better or worse someone answered right away, his voice was honest and enthusiastic and lured me into coming up to ‘just check out’ what he was offering. Of course there was no hope for me, as the french would say, it was a coup de foudre, a bolt of lightning. For as I pulled into the drive there in front of me was a cheeky, sunny, just rusty enough, happiest car I had ever laid eyes on. I could feel that same quiver that had made me melt when I first met Tensie (yes, and you too, Tom). I had found a new friend. Her name is Lemon Drop. A French icon this time around, a 2CV, deux cheveau, two horses, because that is what she has under the hood.
Here is a short list of some of the similarities of these two classics.
--Both have been said to be just as happy sipping bourbon as gasoline.
--The windows open by hand. One’s rolled down and Two’s flap up.
--You shift the gears by listening to what they are singing or whispering to you. Tensie’s gears were on the column, Lemon Drop’s are sort of floating in midair out of the dashboard.
--It’s important to go as fast as you can down hill so that there is any hope of getting up the other side.
--You can never really go very fast so you never miss something fun.
--Both of them have great big skinny steering wheels that spread your arms far apart sort of like driving wings.
--With their unique suspensions, one rigid and one as loose as a goose, you always know what the roads are like. You are engaged with these machines. It is a zen like meditation getting from one place to another.
--Both these gorgeous icons attract all sorts of new friends that are as bubbly and happy as the tin metal girls themselves.
Because the 2CV was in production longer than almost any other vehicle, ever, most french neighbors have a story. The first one everyone tells is “You know how they ride so funny-- like you’re floating? Well that’s because they were built to carry eggs from the farm to market.”
There are the memories of travels. One woman used her’s to get to school when she didn’t even have a drivers license. This man and his three friends bought one and drove it as far north as they could, swearing to keep going until they ran into Santa Claus. This man paid his way through University by repairing them not in a garage, but right on the curbsides of Paris. Another friend still goes to the African desert every year to race the crazy things.
Tensie is still greatly missed and if I could do it over again she would have been in that dang container. There would be no competition between these two because an icon has confidence and grace and each would just enhance the other’s crazy joie de vivre.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Grey, Grey, Grey
With nerves as tattered as the wind-whacked waves, the host of heroes huddled in their tumultuous transports.
"Yo! Buddy! Welcome to America! How's about a hotdog?"
Tom's paintings have succesfully crossed the Atlantic for this year's shows.
Monday, March 10, 2014
April Art Shows
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| Blue Vase Bouquet watercolor
Having finished his palatial studio Tom had the itch to get to work, and get to work he did. All winter he slapped and slathered oil paint on previously stark white canvases. From an outsider’s point of view, watching Tom create a body of work is hard to describe.
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| From sketch to watercolor.
The best I can come up with is this: it’s like watching someone play thirty simultaneous chess matches while experimenting with pyrotechnics. While I went Stateside for the month of January to promote LilyO’s I had to leave Tom alone. In his studio. With lots of frozen pizzas, potato chips, cookies, Cheerios and, of course, his pyrotechnics. I returned to the spectacle of finding a whole new body of work that involved 1500 leaves of 23.5 karat gold leaf. Talk about fancy fireworks. Pardon my bias, but these new works are stunning.
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| New works on gilded paper. |
You can check the new gilded paper paintings as well as Tom’s new oil paintings and watercolors at our newly revised website, www.thomasvieth.com.
And now it’s off to America! We’re doing four shows in the month of April.
We’ll be in:
Richmond, VA April 4th,
Charlotte, NC April 9th
Athens, GA April 12th
Louisville, KY April 16th
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| An Invitation to an Art Show. Please join us if you can! |
If you would like to come to one of these venues and see these wonderful new works please drop me a note and I’ll send you more info.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Funky….
Some of you that have already been to Bourdeilles guessed that my mystery house would be the little hotel and restaurant at Les Griffons. But as crazy as I am, and as much practice as I have of living with a crazy artist, I could never handle a French Chef!
Nope it's this crazy house that has caught my eye. Crazy because its architecture has nothing to do with any other home from here until you cross the Italian border. Crazy because it is in the middle of the village where the bars can be a little noisy on summer evenings. Crazy because it is in need of quite a bit of work.
Just crazy enough to be a fun dream and leave it at that.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
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