sur les plages

there are two beaches that we frequented - one with the smoothest white sand glinting with minuscule mica specks that reflect the light as brightly as mirror dust...
on this calmer shoreline the water is a crystalline pale green in the shallows and warm enough to swim in even before the heat of the summer sun...
the gentle waves offer up small shells and delicate seaweed strands and when the tide is low, patches of shiny mica bits to be mined...

in between painting, I walk with my camera in hand and with my head down coming across exquisite still-life on the undisturbed sand already perfectly pre-arranged for me to just find the right frame and shoot...

sometimes a sea god drags up serpentine algae and presents it to me proudly - the sinuous frill-edged length stretching out lazily on the sand like some flattened primeval snake...

and as the tide ebbs again, graceful swirls of seaweed mark the silvery sand like rudimentary calligraphy from an unknown aquatic race, punctuated by clusters of opalescent shells hiding secret codes...

I stain my aquarelles with colours of pure light, the moist brush-strokes quickly evaporating into the salty air...and I am in my element on this tranquil beach with so much perfection in every detail around me...

on the other beach of the côte sauvage side, a different and wilder personality emerges...

the crashing waves toss up blobs of poisonous jellyfish to sting unwary feet, but I am seduced by their lavender softness, their translucent helplessness stranded on the pebbly beach, now perhaps at the mercy of children with sticks...

the rough barnacled rockpiles on this coastline create crevices and mini pools filled with shell life and lichen blooms... and like the children, we spend hours examining such wondrously pristine displays of undisturbed marine ecosystems...

we also heave rocks to contribute to a seaside festival of "land" or nature art [à la Andy Goldsworthy], where the artists create their installations out of what is at hand along the beaches...

our efforts are completely spontaneous and primitive and inconsequential to the power of the sea, but we are satisfied with our creations and having had the sheer joy of just playing all day by the seashore...

contemplatif

frequently in Brittany I am transfixed by sightings that are so timelessly resonant of a deeper meaning I am always hopeful to have captured it somehow on my tiny camera...
and going over the images later, I come across ones that manage to vibrate more than I had envisioned...
the breton flag "Gwenn ha Du" waves proudly from every flag pole, black and white bands representing the former "pays" or bishoprics of Upper and Lower Brittany, and dotted by the heraldic black ermines flashing in the hallowed skies...

the suggestive stillness of the tops of just a few crosses barely rising above the wall of a small cemetary at high noon...

the hard point of a modernist church spire pierces into atmospheric holiness, its pink and white celtic motifs softening the angular edges...

on the outside wall of a school, the pale squiggle patterns left behind from the removal of old creeping vines...nervous traces of life that once was and now only the most evocative of ghostly remains of a previous florescent exuberance...

one day I was led to a secret church in a secluded hameau...the doors were opened but within it nothing seemed to have been touched for decades...antique light glazed over sacred objects, cobwebs bound crucifixes in place on the dusty altar, and in a small room off to the side, a niche held ex-votos of such raw poignancy, such primal supplication that it was hard to believe such genuflectively felt potency still existed at all...

les temps verts

one of the most transcendant and loveliest of vernal moments, walking along this muddy woodland path through clouds of freshly in bloom queen anne's lace...we had been wandering around a lesser known menhir site in the morning sun and on the way back to the village we found a backfield trail, coming upon this gloriously romantic scene...I felt like some Flaubert femme in a bucolic daze mincing gingerly through the wet earth dragging my satiny folds, with only melodic birdsong and the soft breezes rustling through the budding trees soothing my fervid delusions!

the stillness of this stone font dappled by a film of viridescent lace receives the water from a nearby source known for curing ailments of the nervous system... perfect for dipping those overly delicate 19th century jeunes filles d'amour!

and just beyond the chapelle, slender yellow irises sway elegant in the shade of pale gold foliage warmed by the late afternoon sun...

always back to the shores where we find the abstract arrangements of marine life on smooth rounded rocks...silken mossy algae draping sensuously on the barnacle-doted slopes...

rocks of ages

from the multi-hued blues and delicate pinks of springtime Brittany to the water-sculpted stones and cliff-faces of the coastline, striated in geometric patterns and abstractly spotted with black lichen patches...

to super-human [or perhaps not quite human!] strength hands that built such dolmen "monuments"against which much, much later settlers constructed their conventional stone houses...

we walk in dew-wet fields dotted by immense menhirs that have been placed there beyond the sense of time...

and feel the enigmatic energy exerted from such powerful and solid presences and we wonder of the mysterious significance of the chosen sites...

in Carnac, thousands of such stones are aligned in rows like some neolithic mega-sized cemetary, but their original purpose will never ever be fully revealed...

we can only marvel at the scale and determination to arrange such megaliths and how long they have stood immutable and silent in fields that bloom yellow for countless springs...

and then there is always an invigorated phallic-fixated queen along the way to commemorate some long-winded adventure by erecting this, "une des plus belles stèles du Morbihan"!

la saison rose

I was already pink sensitive before primrose spring arrived and when we came upon large swaths of tiny shell pink flowers blanketing the clifftops of the Côte Sauvage contrasting with the sometimes steel-grey, sometimes deep azure sea, I became even more awashed in a blush pink mood...

carnal pink floral carpets brush onto opera pink stone walls and la Maison Rose at the narrow entrance to an inlet in the Golfe du Morbihan must always remain that pompeian colour as the marker house for sailors...

lovely gardens large and small lushed out in livid pink blossom-clouds...

and cameo pink villas soften the earth tone palette of the vernacular stone architecture...

by the seashore I find flesh pink seashells and the most wondrous marine still-life tableaux...

the luminous alga leaf in gradations of orchid rose fans and drapes a mica-studded rock...

and my pale petal dress blows softly about me as I walk along the edge of my glow-pink paradise...

breton blues

Brittany is a blue world...the eyes are always absorbing the bright blue or the blue-greys of the skies, the stormy blue or calm blue-greens of the sea...and all the varying hues of blues to be found everywhere...

a fading french-blue DUBONNET sign...

a weather-beaten bleu-céleste door facing the Côte Sauvage....

so many other doors and window shutters and trims, fences, garden gates...

soon the lavender blues of the hortensias will add to the zen blueness in gardens and along pathways...

and the light will deepen into late summer, intensifying this most tranquil of colours...

breton skies

as always, the dramatic skies of Brittany never fail to take my breath away...

as soon as we drive past the Bienvenue en Bretagne sign, the clouds gather to welcome us...

the salty sea air blows in our faces, the windswept trees bend as low green clouds...

and we find our place in a pristine paradise, on a wild cloud-dappled coast where the light sparks off the water and the colours of the sea and skies change by the hour....