Nano

Kathmandu, Nepal: Nano, a text in french for those that speak frog or use the bable fishes.

Angels

The garden

 "The grass is not greener on the other side, it's green where you water it."

After my visit to the island, I went to the garden. I wanted to learn permaculture techniques, so I found a teacher and a garden to work in. The garden was huge and the teacher was a contemporary painter and a great gardener who has devoted 20 years of her life to make the garden what it is today. A quiet woman, she knew all the plants and gladly shared her knowledge with me. We have to be greatful for our teachers, and I thank this woman for being my permaculture teacher and friend, an amasing artist who I am glad and extremely lucky to have shared some time with. Her philosphy is simple and best: Art is life, Life is art. She knew I needed to put my hands in the earth, I wanted to be outside the whole day and make the body move. I wanted to hang out with the birds and drink fresh water. I needed to do Gaia Yoga, so in the garden I was...

Shades of red

The news

The news
Pencil on paper

Snails

 Snail

The island

I took the big jump and I dove inside. I landed on what seemed to be an island. I was on a white sand beach, blue crystally water waves making sweet love to the land. In and out, in and out they went. The light was bright in the sky, shining of an almost synthetic glow. As I looked up in the sky, I saw that it was moving and changing constantly. I started seing images passing, and the images became scenes from movies. The sky appeared as a giant technicolor screen on which were playing all the movies, books, and information I gathered through my life. After a while I got up on my feet, and I started walking.

Maya

Maya

Monoprint
Maya

Lovers

Lovers

Monoprint

Self portrait

Self portrait

Charcoal on paper

Turiya

 Turiya

Shades of green

 

In and Out

Looking in

Looking out

Ink on paper

Bodhi

Bodhi

Subway

 Forget

Gurdjieff on art

Gurdjieff has divided art into two categories. The modern art he calls subjective art. The ancient art — the real art — the people who made the pyramids, the people who made the Taj Mahal, the people who made the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, they were of a totally different kind. He calls that art objective art. Subjective art is like vomiting. You are feeling sick, nauseous; a good vomit helps you to feel good. The poison is thrown out, you feel relieved. It is good for you, but not good for others. Now, in the name of modern painting, you are hanging vomited, nauseous, sickening things in your rooms. In the name of modern music you are simply getting into crazier spaces within you. It is subjective art. Modern art is childish — not childlike, remember, childish; not innocent but stupid, insane, pathological.

Shades of blue

Zen and Shakyamuni

"Amongst millions of the poor, Shakyamuni was son of the rich. His father, the king, gave him all: a palace surrounded by wonderful gardens, the best foods, luxurious clothing, the most beautiful bride, hundreds of servants. Locked up in his luxury prison, he did not know the servants misery. All of the sudden, like a little bird that fell on his head, the futur buddha, just like a girl, was taken by a panic attack... Reality was not what he believed it to be!

Flowers

New chapter: seeds and salad

"But says Alice, if the world makes absolutely no sense, 

what keeps us from inventing one?"

I need fresh air. After 3 months of meditation, sitting in the same room, I need the body to get back in action. Fuck zen, fuck meditation, I ain't a monk, I join the world again and I need action. So I take the car, turn up the radio and I drive south. Direction: unknown. I first stop by some friends, the body wakes up. Dishes under the rain and wind, a bit of work in the garden, speak with a girlfriend, it feels good. A few days laters, back in the car for another friends visit. This time it's party time. We eat, drink and pass the joints. Wake up for more drinking, moments of smoky oblivion, time stops, it's artificial paradise. A few days are spent in perfect harmony with the sunsets. A night by the fire, we dance under the stars, we put our heads on drunken knees. It's good and that's enough. I make a tattoo, then 2, then 3, a bit of blood, we carve memories to better remember that it all will pass. We start building a new tippie, enjoy work together. 1,2,3 lift up that star for the roof on top of our heads.

Fractals

 Bubbles

Butter fly

Pinguins serie 2

 On top of the world

Reality

Life, death and love: keep on breathing

It’s been a long time since I wrote. It’s not from a lack of something happening, on the contrary. Too much has happened, too much at the same time, way too much. So when we get a big meal to digest, we need to sit, time to digest. So I sat, I digested for a long winter the new events that are unfolding in my life. Death in the form of the lung cancer of my dad, love in the form of separation from a husband, 6 years passed, it all fell apart in one instant and I found myself back in my home land after 25 years of exil, back at ground zero to witness the ravages of cancer at my parents house. What happened? What did I do to get to this place?

Ghost town

 Memories or what's left behind. Pictures of a ghost town.

Another day to enjoy

Nature contains Nature,
Nature rejoices in her own nature,
Nature surmounts Nature;
Nature cannot be amended but in her own nature.

Sometimes in life, we have to make choices. We stand at a crossroad, we have to pick one way or the other. We’d like to forget it all, start over, erase, delete. Yet  we are not computers, and deleting would be too easy. The truth is that we can not forget, the choices we make become part of who we are, and the only thing we can do is to live with our decisions. The yoga tradition calls it sanskara, the modern science calls it cellular memory. If the yoga tradition speaks of previous life imprints, I figure that dealing with one life is already complicated enough, the next life will come soon enough, and I can’t recall anything about before. After all, it seems that in one life, we already have so many lives, why ask too many questions to which we can only get more confusing answers? The rest, we’ll call it art.

Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel. A scientist with controversial ideas about human evolution and it's origins left behind him drawings of a rare beauty. For him, his drawings were just a side line from his more serious theories about biology. Yet his drawings are so amasingly beautiful in their details and complexity, that one has to be in awe in front of such an eye for seeing the wonders of nature. In Haeckel art, what he called his "doodles", nature appears as a living mandala, rich and alive, infinite in it's variations of shapes and forms. Sea creatures, plants and animals, Haeckel went deep into the mysteries of nature. But enough words, sometimes the most beautiful things are better seen with a silent eye. Welcome to Ernst Haeckel beautiful and magical world...

Welcome to the machine

Welcome my son
Welcome to the machine
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been

41 years later

Once again, I passed another year. 41 years laters, and I am still here, even to my own surprise. For some, it’s old, for other’s it’s the beginning of life. For me, it’s a trip, and oh, what a trip it’s been. Around 40, we’re supposed to be grown ups, we should be adults as the books say. But I don’t believe everything that the book write and I am not quite sure what an adult is yet. So, for this time, let’s take a look at what those 41 years in this life has taught me and if I even learned anything...

Kathmandu by night 2

Kathmandu by night

Kathmandu, Nepal. By night.

 Durbar Square

St Malo

"When they think they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. 

When they know they don't know, people can find their own way."
Tao Te Ching

Flower back study

Back study...

Parasols

Parasols serie on Dauville beach...

Dauville

Casino

Centre 

Dauville, Normandie...

Aqua park

Kali

Kali
OM  KALIKAYAI NAMAHA
Glow in the dark pigments on canvas. Nepal serie.

90x100 cm

Kali on wiki.
Série népalaise: Shanti, Ganesh, Kranti, Kali, Swatantra

Swatantra

Swatantra (freedom)
Glow in the dark pigments on canvas. Nepal serie.

90x100 cm

Série népalaise: Shanti, Ganesh, Kranti, Kali, Swatantra

Life adventure

Life is an adventure or it's nothing at all

Women tattoo nepal

In 2011, 2 nepale friends and I went on a walk. My friends wanted to visit western Nepal, the most remote area of the country. In western Nepal, there are few GNO's and the development goes slowly, most of the NGO's being in the eastern part of the country. The area, is a strong center for the maoist forces, and during the war many schools were destroyed, and many villages deserted. Now, the war finished, and new Nepal in the making, the west is the least developped, making it the wild wild west that few visit.

Jardin des Rêves

"Ne gâche pas ce que tu as en rêvant de ce que tu n'as pas; souviens-toi que ce que tu as maintenant fait partie de ce que tu as espère." Epicurus (BC 341-270)

Avec ces mots de grand sage, on va continuer notre balade autour de Kathmandu. Après Swanbunath, direction le Jardin des Rêves. Niche a l'entree du quartier touristique de Thamel, le jardin est une oasis de fraicheur au milieu de la poussière de Kathmandu. Faisant partie d'un ancient jardin royal, le jardin fut laisse à l'abandon pendant quelques années. Finalement, le jardin fut redécouvert puis rénové avec l'aide du gouvernement Autrichien, pour en faire un des endroits préférés des amoureux de Kathmandu.

Panam cards

 The jester

Hello goodbye...After 5 months of Paris, it's time to go. The subway tickets make a pile in a corner. Some get glued with newspapers, painted over, they become Paris cards.

Mandalas

 In Bergerac, Perigord, I make mandalas while the river flows...