Response #329 (caseyell) Thursday, August 8, 2002

 you know that old saw about being friends with someone for years and
 then one day you look into his/her eyes and, Wham!, you're in love?
 
 well, that happened to me in Vancouver last week-end, although my
 new-found passion is for a man's paintings rather than for the man
 himself.
 
 Deep in the loveliest part of the Dordogne is an inn run by a fabulous
 former fashion photographer named Georges Dambier. We have stayed
 there three times and I love everything about the place, from Baghdad
 Cafe, the resident chien, to the decor, a blend of local antiques and
 contemporary art. But although I always appreciated the overall look, I
 never really yearned to own any of the art: mostly still-life
 lithographs, signed with personal dedications to Georges. 
 
 The, last Saturday, I walked into the Buschler Mowatt Gallery, saw a
 massive oil painting across an uncrowded room and lost my heart. This
 was unexpected: My heart generally beats faster in the presence of
 Early California landscapes or massive portraits by Sargent. If I had
 an extra $600,000 lying around, I know just the Wayne Thibaud oil I'd
 buy at Hackett-Freedman, and I'd sell my soul for that small Manet
 painting of white asparagusif the D'Orsay ever decides to part with it.
 But a huge, nearly abstract study of a vase of flowers done in
 taxi-cab yellow and black? Not likely, I'd have said. I'd have been
 wrong.
 
 Seems Georges's friend, the painter Bernard Cathelin, is a well-known
 member of the Ecole de Paris. He studied with Matisse. He was the
 subject of a major retrospective show at the Orangerie earlier this
 summer. He's 84 years old and still painting vigorously: the work I
 loved in the gallery was done just last year.
 
 I have neither the wall space nor the art budget for one of his oils,
 but the gallery also carries his lithographs -- which are exquisitely
 done on Japanese rice paper. J and I bought one (another black and
 yellow floral still life) as an anniversary gift to each other and then
 Jack bought me a second (a very understated gray and white study of
 roses in a vase)as a "sorry you didn't get to paris and st. petersburg"
 gift. I *danced* out of that gallery--and am now at that delicious
 stage of a new love affair where I'm googling for more information and
 buying books and thinking all the time about this, to me, magical
 artist. 
 

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