I was always interested in restoration, either furniture or houses. It could not be old enough, as more dilapidated as more interesting to discover the original structures, surfaces and materials. Since a few years, mainly since we are living in France, we spend a lot of time restoring old village houses. We restored our 300 years house framework house in Germany before, but here in Fitou we already did three houses and the fourth will be ready very soon. Every house was a complete restoration, we mostly started with nothing else than the outside walls, didn’t even had a complete roof.
It’s very satisfying to create something beautiful for people to live in and it’s an intensive learning process to. I learned a lot about materials and techniques, even took a course to learn about plastering walls traditionally, with natural materials appropriate for the region and climate. That includes plastering walls with certain surfaces, like Stucco, Fresco, Tadelakt, and thus it all started: working with colours, pigments, marble powder, lime, savon noir, etc. People were fascinated about the results and some friends said I am an artist 😉
And even an artist which stayed with us for a month to prepare his exhibition for La Chapelle, an Art association in Fitou, said I should explore this ability.
In a very quiet moment, when I was alone for a few days, I started my first painting, using traditional plastering techniques and something magical happened to me. Read about it next week.
Meantime, I did a few more paintings and it was time to think about what to do with. Of course, I like them all, but it’s not the point to keep it all for myself. I want to share it with a wider audience, hoping people will love and enjoy it, get inspired by it and buy it.
Obviously, I registered a domain name, set up a website and made a plan how to promote all.