I am a huge believer in the importance of getting creative. Carving out some time in the day to make some pretty is the best therapy I can thing of.
Creativity comes in so many different forms: I found raising my children to be very creative; designing and maintaining my garden; decorating my home; arranging flowers; baking a cake or laying a table! We can’t all be gifted artists, but we can all find a way to express ourselves that is balm to our soul.
But creativity is like a tender plant, we have to nurture it and encourage it. If we lock our creativity in the dark without light or water then it will dwindle and we suffer. This is something I’ve discovered recently. MFCH may have started as a simple blog but it has become a business, and it is time-consuming. There are creative days of course, but there are days when it’s impossible for me to find the time to do something creative, and this quickly becomes a vicious circle.
So I decided to make the month of August my creative month. Try to revive my own small artistic ability and also observe the gifted artists that I am lucky enough to meet and observe how they use their art, and how it shapes their lives.
Today is the first encounter, I want to talk to you about Bruno Louis. An artist I know in the south of France. He lives in the tiny hilltop village of Tourtour and paints the people and scenes he sees in everyday village life. His medium is pen and watercolour, his signature style are his quirky portraits of village life, and also the ornate ceramics that he decorates and sells.
He didn’t grow up in this village but arrived on a whim, found a house to live in and stayed. Thanks to his art, his easel and his generosity he has become an important figure in village life.
He learned to paint at art school, and developed his skill further when he worked at Moustiers, another village famous for its decorated ceramics. He is naturally fairly shy, and very modest. But thanks to his art, he meets people from all walks of life, and has even become the official ‘Recorder of Events’, and is brought in to sketch and paint family celebrations; village occasions and more.
On my instagram today you can watch a video I made of him sketching the market this summer. And in the current edition of the MFCH Magazine you can learn more about his work.
I’ll be back in a few days with a very different creative offering. Hope your summer is going well…. and that you are finding some time to express yourself, no matter your medium.
