IRIS AND LA PLACE CLICHY

I visited my friend Iris yesterday. She lives in Boulogne just outside of Paris.She called to tell me that she had a surprise. Something about a coat.

The surprise was really an old drawing I had made in 1975  that she had recently dug up.

Iris is a "sentimental saver" and her walls show it. 

Some people throw away flowers when they are limp.  If a good friend has offered her a fine bouquet she will not dump it until each petal is brown and moldy.  She is that way with objects and photos... and friends.

The drawing, made on  a shirt cardboard with a scratch pen was of a scene on La Place Clichy.  I was living in a maid's room near by at the time on la rue Amsterdam completely focused on my abstract water colors.

I made it for someone who was looking for someone to illustrate his children's book  series. 

It didn't meet with his approval, but he added with his rejection. "You'll never get anywhere with this crap (my water colors) why don't you paint clowns?"

What  astonished me about seeing this drawing was how it revealed "life on the bench" in 1975.

The man is opening a can of sardines. At that time a special key was necessary and 

most clochards possessed one. The pigeon friendly woman, I later learned, was breaking the law. It"s a crime in Paris to feed pigeons.

And the working woman on her lunch break would no longer be reading Le Figaro. 

Time has passed and I have yet to paint a clown.