Festival d’Art Flore Faune en Périgord Pourpre – Artists & Ecology

Here’s the details of the Fourth Festival d’Art en Périgord Pourpre. The opening night is at the mairie de Thenac on the 31 May at 19,30hrs.

Expositions du 31 mai au 8 juin 2008
dans les villes d’ Eymet, Cunèges, Puyguilhem (Thénac), Saussignac et Sigoulès

I believe I’m in Eymet at Le Centre Culturel with the other ‘Artistes Invitées’. Just follow the banners. I’ll be exhiting my owls which I posted in Quatre Carte-Postales de Mon Co-Locataire, L’Hibou Some good contemporary art in these shows. Don’t miss them.

 

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HOMMAGE à HENRI MORI

This year the central artist is the sculptor Henri MORI. Anyone who has been to Sarlat will have seen his geese besides the covered market place (geese being the source of the livers used in the making of fois-gras, one of the principle export items of the Dordogne). The Museum of Sarlat is loaning out 51 sculptures for this show, made in the local stone of Les Eyzies (see my ‘rocks’ category, where I’ve had a stab at painting some of the cliffs of Les Eyzies).

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CONCERNING ARTISTS & ECOLOGY

‘La Nature peut vivre sans L’Homme mais l’Homme ne peut vivre sans la Nature’ – bon mot Francais (Nature can live without Man but Man can not live without Nature)

This is a subject close to my heart as a landscape painter with some thirty or so years experience. It is also the key theme to this annual event.

“To write a love song, you have to be love” Henry Hensche (Cape Cod School of Art).

The experience of being in a landscape & painting what you love, what you care about is central to my practice. It tends to follow on naturally , in my experience, that (some) artists become engaged for the well-being of their subject matter. I think of Leonardo da Vinci, who bought pigeons in the market place & then set them free, with his hands, right in the middle of the market place, much to amazement of the onlookers. Why did he do this?

I’ve written fairly extensively elsewhere abour ‘artists & ecology’ & so what I’ll do over the period of this festival is post these writings & images here. à suivre ….

Read more artists & ecology in this blog:

Artists & Ecology #1 – Festival Flore Faune
Artists and Ecology #2 – Robert HAINARD – how to ‘blind contour draw’
Artists & Ecology #3 – Constable, Corn & the Destruction of Hedgerows
Artists & Ecology # 4 – Paintings of Potatoes, Semances & Homage à José Bové
Artists & Ecology # 5 -Le Dropt, Castillonnés , a green corridor?
Artists & Ecology # 6 – No Space for Nature in the Countryside? Wendell Berry