After eating lunch at Gourdon, we decided to move on. We still had quite a bit of time, so we went back to the map. The town of St Paul de Vence was kind of on the way back to Biot. Why not we thought.
The drive down the mountain from Gourdon was fun. I probably drove too quickly, but twisting down the narrow roads is just so enjoyable. I'm not sure if Todd agreed with me on that. We got down into the valley that we had been looking down at from Gourdon and found ourselves in front of the town of St Paul de Vence.
It's a weird place.
At first, walking into the town we thought we were just entering into another one of the quaint French towns in the region.
Turns out that this town was a bit different. St Paul de Vence was a popular haven for artists from around the world and was also full of celebrities who wanted to be around other "artistic" people. We did our usual thing of walking around and trying to find the best things to see in this small town. There wasn't really all that much to see. There were some viewpoints to see some of the surrounding region, but nothing as nice as from Gourdon. The town itself was quite small and there wasn't too much special to go and see. As we were walking and talking, one of the artists who was sitting and painting by the side of her gallery looked up and exclaimed "that's an interesting accent" in a very distinctive Australian twang. This artist was herself an Australian from Sydney. She had been living in St Paul de Vence and painted glow in the dark paintings using a variety of luminescent paints that really didn't seem that safe to be handling. We chatted with her for a bit and she explained to us a bit more about the town and some of the grim realities faced by the residents. It was still a "real" town with residents, but it wasn't really a working town anymore. There was no butcher, boulangerie or market within the town anymore, high rents had forced all these shops out. This meant that the older folk living there were now reliant on being taken out for shopping trips. She pointed out an old man who was walking his cat on the edge of the town's walls. Apparently this happened every day, he would wake up, get drunk and then take his cat for a walk. There's something very odd about seeing someone taking a cat for a walk and the cat in question seemingly agreeing to this arrangement. No leash, no rope or any other form of connection... just an old man walking with his cat slowly following. She also said the walls of the buildings were full of arsenic due to earlier construction using poor quality materials. Apparently this arsenic was poisoning the residents (though she didn't explain why it was then that she decided that it was still safe for her to stay there). It was a grim overview of the town she was giving us...
Then things started to get weird....
She started to tell us about her art, and how there were cosmic forces and dreams that inspired her and gave her visions (her pictures were nice, but the Australian Aboriginal influences were undeniable, a fact she refused to acknowledge). She began to mix in scientific words into very unscientific topics as she described her artistic process and why it was that her work was so powerful. She mentioned eddy currents and magnetic forces which was an immediate and gigantic flashing red light for me. She told us about her rejection of money and finances, whilst then telling us in detail about her sales to Qatari royals. There was a constant contradiction to her which I found incredibly interesting, yet startling at the same time. She finished everything off with an attempt to cold read the both of us, having decided that she wanted to read our palms.... of course. She then proceeded to give us her in-depth cosmic assessments of our characters. It probably would have been a far more intriguing and amazing insight had we not been talking to each other for close to an hour... it's not really all that insightful a "reading" when you've already been quizzing someone for that amount of time. Still, it made me think about how often something like this would work on other people and how she genuinely seemed to believe all of this.
It was getting late. We said our goodbyes to the Australian artist, who for all of her peculiarities was very nice, and went back to the car. It was a very strange town.
The drive down the mountain from Gourdon was fun. I probably drove too quickly, but twisting down the narrow roads is just so enjoyable. I'm not sure if Todd agreed with me on that. We got down into the valley that we had been looking down at from Gourdon and found ourselves in front of the town of St Paul de Vence.
She started to tell us about her art, and how there were cosmic forces and dreams that inspired her and gave her visions (her pictures were nice, but the Australian Aboriginal influences were undeniable, a fact she refused to acknowledge). She began to mix in scientific words into very unscientific topics as she described her artistic process and why it was that her work was so powerful. She mentioned eddy currents and magnetic forces which was an immediate and gigantic flashing red light for me. She told us about her rejection of money and finances, whilst then telling us in detail about her sales to Qatari royals. There was a constant contradiction to her which I found incredibly interesting, yet startling at the same time. She finished everything off with an attempt to cold read the both of us, having decided that she wanted to read our palms.... of course. She then proceeded to give us her in-depth cosmic assessments of our characters. It probably would have been a far more intriguing and amazing insight had we not been talking to each other for close to an hour... it's not really all that insightful a "reading" when you've already been quizzing someone for that amount of time. Still, it made me think about how often something like this would work on other people and how she genuinely seemed to believe all of this.
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