art beat / By Linda Mitchell

Painting in Paris

(March 1, 2007)  It was raining the day we first met Axel Marchand. Micki and I had taken shelter under a long canopy with a tin roof, in an area just off the Champs Elysees, after getting rained out of the place we’d originally planned to paint that day. We started new paintings under the shelter, with the rain pounding on the tin over our heads and bright orange leaves floating to the ground around us. It was the middle of September, about halfway through our month-long Parisian painting trip, and it was finally beginning to feel like fall.

There were very few tourists in the vicinity, a welcome change from the Alexander III Bridge, where we’d been working when the rain started. We’d also painted on the bridge the day before and had decided to return, even though the location had an irritating vibe. The views were extravagant from all directions, but we’d situated our easels in an odd little enclosed space where tourists felt free to put their noses an inch from our canvases or stand right in front of our easels, blocking our view. The traffic was incessant and every French official who had a siren blared it to get across the intersection.

Linda Mitchell (L) and Micki Dyson-Flatmo (R).

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At any rate, under our quiet and cozy shelter off the Champs Elysees, Micki and I were painting the same subject - a woman sitting at the other end of the canopy sketching the Grand Palais - when Axel stopped to look at our work. He was young and charming and appeared absolutely delighted to meet us. “How very wonderful!” he said, in French-accented English. “You don’t see painters on the streets of Paris anymore.”

Axel said he taught “traditional methods” at a private art school around the corner. It was the first day of class, orientation, so he expected it to be a short one, and he hoped we’d still be there when he finished work so we could continue our conversation. After complimenting our paintings, he hurried off.

Micki and I returned to a topic we’d discussed throughout our trip, the scarcity of painters on the streets. We had expected to blend right into the scenery of Paris, figuring there’d be so many other painters working that no one would even notice us. Instead, our easels were tourist magnets - people took our pictures as frequently as if we were the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe. It was fun and annoying in equal measure, depending on how well the painting was going on any given day.

Our paintings of the sketching woman under the canopy became more complicated when she packed up her campstool and left. A changing environment was a daily challenge. People moved, boats sailed away, the light shifted and clouds obliterated the sun. It meant we had to work faster, be more confident with our brushwork, more interpretive. We were trying to figure out how to finish our paintings without the model, when Axel returned.

“Your work - it’s somewhat traditional, oui?” he said to Micki. “And your friend is more expressionist. Like Munch, yes?” I decided there were worse artists to be compared to and piled the paint on the canvas with a palette knife in an expressive way to impress our young art teacher.

Axel was also a painter and seemed hungry to talk with other artists. He said he too enjoyed working outdoors, but he rarely had the opportunity anymore with his teaching schedule. We asked why there didn’t seem to be any other painters on the streets.

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