Parisian Apartment.

Parisian Apartment.

There is always something mysterious about attics, whether they be places of storage or accommodation inherited from childhood. That sense of hidden treasure or old forgotten toy from some distant past. I have always had a fascination about attics; they give you that sense of superiority to look down on the world, something that is impossible if you happen to live in a basement. Years ago when I first married we lived in a basement apartment in Rome with all its attendant problems. On one occasion a large slab from the concrete ceiling came crashing down into the middle of the living room, luckily no one was hurt. The most amusing event arising from the experience was watching the Italian workman carry out the repair.

 

After loading up his trowel with fresh soft cement he would casually throw the mixture over his left shoulder in the general direction of the hole in offending ceiling with mixed results. Somehow he was able to deposit cement on the outside of the door even   though it was shut. Being a basement it was bitterly cold during the winter months, so much so that we rigged up a make shift gas fire that one night nearly gassed us.

 

Naturally in our latter years with these experiences behind us an attic apartment in Paris appealed, at least we could claim to have moved up in the world. Rome and Paris have always been two of my most favourite cities and to have the opportunity to live in St. Germain Des Pres proved too much to resist. One of the great advantages of attic apartments is the view they offer of Parisian rooftops in a wonderful assortment of shapes, textures and colour.  This new vantage point offers many exciting visuals and I set about drawing some fifty odd watercolours over the next few weeks. I decided to develop these sketches into surrealist paintings with the views spilling in through the window and then dribbling down the wall.

 

The windows themselves come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and offer a view
of the nightly activities of the neighbours. No matter what the hour there  was       always some sort of festivities in the street cafes below, so much so that you could never feel Isolated. The apartment itself was some  three metres wide and about twenty metres long, very comfortable and cosy. The only drawback to life being the likelihood of banging your head several times a day on sloping walls.  

 

Over the weeks that followed I extended the area of roof tops  drawings to take in St. Germain, Paris’ oldest church and St. Sulpice and onto the Luxembourg Gardens. There were times that I felt that I could spend the whole year here drawing without repeating myself. That is one of those wonderful things about the city of Paris its endless visual variety.