Tuesday. I had this one planned for weeks. Free sculpture museum in the morning, the gallery quais in the afternoon, home with a full sketchbook and a page of notes on what actually sells here. What I had not thought to check was which day this town shuts its best doors.
So I was out early instead, before any of it was open, and the first thing that stopped me was a window with nobody behind it. Pikachu in oils. A Mandalorian painted like a Dutch master. And across the glass, in polite grey letters, Lieu d’Exposition. Exhibition Space. Nous révélons les talents artistiques.
That is a room for hire dressed up as a mission statement, and I stood there doing the sums for a space like it at home. What you would need to sell in a fortnight to cover the rent. How many originals against how many prints. Nobody tells you that this counts as research. It only looks like a woman staring at a shopfront.
By ten the Grenier Public was open. The old public barn beside the Collégiale, five painters on the walls from the twenty first of July to the third of August, put on by the local art and music association. Free to walk in. Open mic under the stone vaults every evening from six.
I loved it. Watercolours propped on easels, a folder of drawings you are allowed to flip through, a speaker on a stand because at six this stops being a gallery and starts being a gig. Prices on things. You learn more about a place from what it dares to charge than from anything written on the wall.
Then the bit I did not plan at all. Michel Lucae and Jean Bartole, two of the five painters hanging inside, came out to the sign while I was standing there, and instead of stepping out of my shot they stopped, put an arm around each other and grinned straight down the lens. I did not have anything like enough French to explain why an Australian was photographing their A-frame. It did not matter in the slightest.
The buildings have been the draw on this whole trip. The people keep turning out to be the surprise.
The afternoon went up an impasse off the rue de la République, which is where the makers turn out to be hiding. First a former stable packed with metal, wire bent into insects and birds and half the contents of a Jules Verne novel. Then La Manufacture, about twenty local artists and artisans sharing one big room and a garden with sculpture dropped through it.
Two hundred and fifty for a one off portrait in mixed media, worked straight over a page of old French newspaper. Not an edition. Not a series. One. I photographed a great many price cards today and I refuse to be embarrassed about it. Format, framing, what earns eye level and what goes in a browsing rack… that is the difference between a lovely holiday and a trip that pays for itself.
Down on the quai I found a poster bolted to a wall. Anne Virlange, peintre des rêves oubliés. Painter of forgotten dreams. Her gallery is right there behind it, open Wednesday to Sunday, and today is a Tuesday, so of course it was shut.
Thirty years she has been doing this. Six months painting, six months showing, one town, her own room. I read that on my phone standing in front of her poster and something went very quiet in me. That is not a fantasy. That is a business plan with a brush in it.
Then I leaned over a rail and forgot the whole lot for ten seconds.
Running Duck Studio. I have had that name a long time and here are two of the things upending themselves in the Sorgue right in front of me, tails in the air, water so clear you can count the stones underneath. Old animator brain woke straight up, watching for the flick of the tail at the top of the dive. I stayed far longer than I will admit.
Last walk of the day went out to the park on the avenue de la Libération, past a villa turning gold in the low sun.
The sculpture foundation sits a few streets from there. Contemporary sculpture, free entry, one of the reasons I chose this town in the first place… and it does not open on a Tuesday in summer. Entirely my own fault. It is free all week and I will get there. Tomorrow is Arles and a photography festival, so it may have to wait a little longer yet, and I find I do not mind. The doors that were locked today walked me straight into better ones.
The famous Sunday market at L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, walked from twenty to nine while it was still cool. Rusted chairs, a canal hung with old linen, a wall of masks, and a lesson in selling from a leaflet.
Saturday’s list said one thing, go to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse and find paper. What I got first was a cliff with a castle stuck on top of it, a ruined garden, and a river that comes out of the ground and will not tell you where it has been.
An early loop around the town before the shutters went up, which turned into a dog in a doorway, a cat under the postcards and a brocante with nobody in it. By midday the lot of it was in blue biro.
