One of the things we always like to buy when we go on trips is artwork. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, we just have to love it.
When we went to Europe, we were walking around the 18th district (Montmartre), which is known as the artsy-fartsy district. Meaning…the local Parisian artists set up shop in the streets there and sell their work. It’s also the District that contains the Sacre Coeur, the famous stairs that are in practically every movie based in Paris, and the steep streets.
We walked all around, and we stopped twice at this one particular artist’s booth. We really liked his work as an impressionist. So we picked out which painting we liked the best and he wrapped it up for us.
But I think the best part of the whole experience was that he didn’t speak any English. So we had a nice (somewhat choppy) conversation with him in French. We asked what the painting was (his imagination or an actual place). He told us that he lives in Normandy so all of his paintings are scenes from Normandy. Then we asked him if he preferred Normandy or Paris. He said he prefers Normandy to live, but Paris for work. Ha ha. Which makes sense. He can sell way more paintings to tourists in Paris than he can in Normandy. He said he comes to Paris every weekend to sell his work.
He was a very nice older gentleman. He had this crazy white/grey hair that was very….untamed. And round glasses.
Anyways….we got the painting home safely and then took it to the frame store to get framed. It was painted on a wrapped canvas, so technically we didn’t NEED a frame for it (wrapped canvas is wrapped around a wood frame of some sort), but we wanted it to stand out a bit more. So we chose a gold-brushed frame with a blue matting to bring out the blue in the painting. We hung it in the dining room. I love it!
The next painting we bought was last week in California. It’s a very different type of painting.
It’s Chunk! From the Goonies. Doing the Truffle Shuffle.
This just goes to show you are varied our tastes are. On one wall we have a painting of Normandy done by a French artist. And on the same wall (the other side in the hallway) we have a kid from an 80’s movie lifting his shirt up and shaking his belly.
I love both paintings. One makes me think back of that day in Paris walking around the cobblestone streets, listening to the local musicians play in the square, walking hand in hand with husband and just breathing in Paris.
And the other makes me think of the pizza place in downtown San Diego where I would burst out laughing about every 5 minutes, each time I would look at Chunk, a character from one of my favorite movies as a kid.
And that is a tale of two paintings.
