Paris is especially beautiful in the spring. I was in Paris in October 2013 and returned on the Spring equinox in 2014. By chance, both dates coincided with the change in Daylight Savings Time, yet the spring was particularly impressive. In a two-week period, I saw bare trees generate foliage almost too full to see through. The flower displays throughout the city were marvelous. The midday temperature reached 20 degrees celsius on the sunny days.
I didn’t bring a painting easel as I had to travel light but I had time to do some watercolours. The experience of looking for a place to paint reminded me of my forays in Rome. Alas, Paris is a big city with roaring traffic; maybe even louder than in Rome in some places. The narrow streets that would like to beckon your imagination are full of parked cars which block the views and impede the passage. The grand avenues begin screaming with grouped packets of cars and trucks as early as 6.00 am.
I am the solitary painter, anchored on the street, gasping for a breath of air and trying to scrutinize the horizon through the passing buses without being trampled by the moving herd. Of course there is refuge in the parks and sometimes a bench on a large square but these spaces are not like the sudden openings of sky that one finds on a usual street intersection in Paris. Here, one can witness the sidewalk cafè with lounging visitors and the emerging Metro stop with surrounding newspaper kiosks and light Naples-yellow-coloured buildings with balconied facades.
In such a place, in the afternoon as the sun passes from one heavy purple cloud to another with intermittent beams of silvery light, one can observe a unique and intense mixture of warmth and coolness that is typical for this city. Photographs can’t capture this and, unfortunately, the conditions of the present situation make it difficult for a painter to try.
[whohit]-March 2014 Paris _EN-[/whohit]
