Very Serious Business

Just starting their two-hour lunch. Most of them are also on their phones. Still a classy Paris afternoon.

YOU DO NOT MESS WITH LUNCH

French lunch is two hours long. You come to work in the morning, and go home for lunch. If you can’t go home you spend two hours of civilized time with your friends and/or co-workers eating together. Then you go back to work. No eating at your desk. No grocery shopping. Besides, the grocery store is at lunch too.

If you linger in a store and it’s almost noon you get the stern glance and the hairy eyeball. Clearings of throats and meaningful looks at watches follow, then they stand over at the door holding it open. While this is a cultural norm it’s also an actual law. You don’t mess with state-sponsored free time.

In bigger cities more substantial businesses stay open during the lunch hour, but the lunch workers are resentful. And why not? They should be having lunch. And so should you.

Fall colors exist, but it’s not like New England.

Painting Story: Autumn in Brittany

The nights are drawing in and the leaves are turning brown. Growing up in New England I always took the glorious fall colors for granted. Not so much now. I mean, they have Fall colors, just not that shocking, vibrancy of the New English autumn leaves. So I occasionally paint Fall colors here.

These stories come from my monthly pdf newsletter/magazine. Click here for your free subscription.

How to Take a Break

A little preparation goes a long way, even if it’s old news.

France has long vacations, shorter work weeks, and many national holidays. Yet the workforce is considered quite productive. How do they pull this off?

Le Figaro is a national newspaper with several magazines that clearly prepare issues in advance of the summer break. This August they featured “Celebrity Carcrash of the Week”. These were stories about actual historical car crashes like James Dean or Princess Diana. It’s pretty gross, but from the staff’s point of view, easily researched and prepared weeks in advance. It means they can happily go to Saint Tropez, flush in the knowledge that they can relax and their circulation will not suffer. Old gossip is often as good as the new stuff.

Productivity is possible, you just have to work at it.

Politics is ruining everything!

As of this writing the French Post Office has decided to suspend sending packages to the United States. This is in response to the current government’s mysterious love affair with tariffs. Not only is it mystifying on it’s own, but the policy seems to change frequently. Politics aside, it means that I can’t send paintings to the U.S. This might change soon, it might not. But for the moment I can only sell prints in the US, because they are literally printed in the US.

Grrrr.

This stories are from my monthly pdf magazine Living & Painting in France. Click here for your free subscription.

The Sustainable Monks

The remains of a tower at the monastery of Nendrum.

TURNS OUT THAT sustainable power has been around for centuries.

On a recent family trip to Northern Ireland we visited the remains of the 1,500-year-old monastery of Nendrum on Mahee Island in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland. Perched on top of a hill with spectacular views of the surrounding bay and undulating countryside, the site was carefully chosen for a number of reasons. Firstly, you could see the enemy coming from every direction. Which enemy? Well there were tons of them, including their closest neighbors and vikings.

So in addition to being a place of worship and contemplation, there were remnants of battlements, and awkwardly small, easy-to-defend entrances. The monks had to fight off blood-thirsty marauders. Must have been interesting training at the seminary.

A doorway and the magnificent view across the lough. it helps that the sun always shines in Ireland.

Apart from the beautiful site and completely un-typical sunny weather (it was gorgeous all week!), what intrigued me was the way they milled their flour. The tide comes in and fills up the bay. The monks had a watergate that they would lower when the bay was full. After the tide went out they channeled the water to their mill and allowed it to power the mill while it drained out. Simple, effective, ingenious.

This article is taken from Living & Painting in France. Click here for your subscription. It’s Free!

A Momentous Birthday & Arty Family Members

Elaine cuts the birthday cake with help from the artistic Leila.

Leila’s latest masterpiece.

We took the ferry from Cherbourg to Dublin and drove up to Belfast for my sister-in-law’s 80th birthday celebration. It took place in a classy old gentleman’s club in the centre of town, with tall windows and huge wood-panneled rooms. Friends and family shared a grand meal. Elaine is lovely and very spry, and you would never guess she had just turned 80.

One of Mark’s horses. mark.blackburne.art on Instagram

I also caught up with the news of some of our artier relatives.

Nephew Stevie’s partner is storming it in Melbourne in Australia. His recent show was a big success, and after years in advertising he is now a happily painting, full-time artist.

From James’ show in Australia. theartofjamesprice.com

Great niece Leila is a stroppy teenager with great promise. She also has a tiktok channel. Young people today!

Baxter is not an artist, he’s more of a poet.

And nephew Mark is an occasional artist. His career takes up most of his time, but when he gets the inspired he does beautiful work. Lots of animals but some more recent experimental stuff.

I like it when artists succeed. Lmc

This article is from my monthly petite magazine, Living & Painting in France. Click here to sign up for your free subscription.

April in Paris

Florent with an Apero spritz.=erm this decade’s drink of the moment. Delicious, pricey, worth it.

The French transportation system is very Paris-centric. Railway lines emanate out from the Paris hub like the tentacles of a huge octopus. And the rail system is fast and efficient — particularly if you want to go to Paris. On a recent trip to Bordeaux we had to travel north to Paris, change trains, then head south to Bordeaux. On the map it’s practically a right angle.

All of which is to say that on our way home we stopped off in Paris for several very pleasant nights.

This was not a trip for visiting museums, it was more of a checking-in-with-our-pals trip.

We went out to lunch and dinner, visited the Montmartre market, and watercolored on the Pont Neuf. Some friendly Brits were sitting on the bankside in one of those Paris hazes — the Seine! The Haussman buildings! The pretty girls! The Louvre! The sunshine! One of them bought my watercolor on the spot. Paris can make that happen. It’s magic! Lmc

Sunshine on the Seine. It’s hard to be in a bad mood.

The New Pont Neuf Project

When Christo and Jean Claude put up The Gates in Central Park in New York City in 2005, I went down early in the morning to take a look. Thousands of orange curtains were set up over the pathways of Central Park. There were crowds of interested parties like me, New York artists who had been hired to help construct the enormous project were celebrating, and flocks of helicopters from the world’s news organizations hovered above. I had seen images of The Gates for years.

This is the plan that artist JR hopes to realize this September.

This is how C&JC created these mega-projects. Starting in 1979 they sold drawings of the proposed scheme to galleries and museums to raise money. This also raised their credibility with the bureaucrats who they had to persuade to give them the go ahead. Some of their projects never got off the ground. But after decades of trying, under at least four different New York City mayors, here we were.

I was skeptical. What was the point of all this?

The Gates was an extraordinary and impactful project.

In fact it was pretty cool. All along the miles of pathways, every 10 or 15 feet there were posts on either side of the path to hold up the curtains. The paths in Central Park are all different widths so the curtains had to be all different widths. Some of the paths were on a slant, so the feet of the steel posts needed to be on a slant. The amount of work to cover the entire park with bespoke curtains and posts was mind-bending, and the craftsmanship was very detailed and beautiful.

The big surprise for me was the way the wind behaved. The wind blows the curtains, right? In my mind all the curtains blew in the same directions. But these real curtains took on a life of their own and blew in all kinds of directions. You could look out over a broad expanse of the park and see lots of little winds blowing hither and thither that I had never been aware of before. Suddenly I could see a hitherto invisible world for the first time.

Jean Claude died in 2009 and Christo in 2020 but their aesthetic lives on. French photographer and street artist JR and plan to transform the Pont Neuf in Paris into a giant rock sculpture. He is working with the Christo et Jean Claude Institute, and the early drawings show the bridge changed into a craggy rock formation.

The Gates project made me see my built environment in a totally new way. I hope JR’s nutty Pont Neuf new project does the same.

The Projet Pont Neuf installation runs from Sept. 1-30, 2025. Clcik here for more details.Lmc

This article is taken from Living & Painting in France, my petite magazine/newsletter about my life here in the French countryside. Click here for your copy. It’s Free!

PAINTING STORY: Commuters on the Seine.

Commuting in Paris has it’s advantages.

One of my earliest jobs involved a subway ride, an overland train, and then a car ride to get to a newspaper out on Long Island in New York. It took almost two hours to get to work. It was underpaid but a great creative opportunity but I didn’t fall in love with commuting. Another commute was a 60- minute-long New York subway ride in rush hour. I managed to read “Martin Chuzzlewit” – Charles Dickens’ 2” thick novel – over six months going to that job.

Unless you get a cosy seat in a warm carriage, commuting is a big fat pain in the neck. The recent Paris trip included some nose-to-nose sardine packing on the #9 line when we accidentally hit rush hour.

On the whole the Paris metro is clean, efficient, and timely. We visitors tend to use the metro outside of commuting hours so our view is a little rosy.

What Parisians take for granted is that their commute often involves gorgeous scenes like this painting: delicate bridges spanning the Seine surrounded by elegant Haussmanian buildings and fall colors. If you have to commute, this is the way to do it.

This watercolor appears in my book “Walking in Paris”. One client was leafing through the book and loved this image. She wanted to buy the original. She has a large frame which is too big for the orginal so she asked me to do a new version that will fit the frame — my first commision for a while.

Click here to see more about Walkting in Paris. Lmc

This article is taken from my monthly newsletter Living & Painting France. Click here for a free subscription.

New Year’s Evolutions

Happy New Year! We’ve had a hell of a 2024 with everyone trying to scare the crap out of us. One pundit’s logo is literally two men shouting at each other. Had enough yet?

Here in rural France with cows next door and rosy fingered dawn illuminating the peaceful countryside, I still can’t escape the news. But I can focus on the good stuff: lovely students, amazing husband, friends, 
food, and painting. So here’s some positive New Year’s resolutions. Or to be clear, plans for the New Year.

GOING SMALL

I’m going to focus on making small, striking paintings. Simpler, more immediate, and not including the kitchen sink.

STUDIO

I’m planning to build a small studio in the garden. We live on a hillside so the studio needs to be on on stilts. French planning permission can be quaint and infuriating. Now that the Paris show is over it’s time to visit the mayor’s office and figure it out.

YOUTUBE

My new Youtube channel is underway. It will include snippets of my French life and art life in the countryside. I’ll also have short videos with drawing tips, ink techniques, and other art class-type stuff. Ink is interesting. You can’t erase it like charcoal or pencil. You can fudge it and fake it, and make mistakes into features. Kind of like life. I love it.

LIFE DRAWING

I’m also planning a life drawing class. The challenge around here is to find a model who will take off their clothes. And this will not be online! If you live nearby consider a new experience! Or at least spread the word.

ETC.

Anything else? Well there is the usual eat healthy, exercise and lose weight stuff. But this year I want to take my art forward. Can I do that and fit into my trousers as well? That’s the plan.LMC

This article is taken from the January issue of my monthly pdf magazine, Living & Painting in France, which has just been published. If you would a FREE subscription click here.

The Phoenix of Paris

Notre Dame is re-opening next week and we have our first view of how the renovation looks from the inside.

They cleaned off all the smoke damage along with the accumlated grime of eight centures.

It’s light! And bright! If you ever visited the cathedral before the awful fire in 2019 you will remember it as grand and majestic and very dark. After the renovation it’s like a sparkling, crystal palace. In addition to the fire damage, centuries of guttering candles and heavy-breathing parishioners took it’s toll on the white marble – not to mention the period during the Revolution when the building was used as a munitions dump. The cathedral survived that anti-religious era, and even miraculously came out unscathed from World War II. Hitler was furious that he was losing the war and ordered the destruction of Paris. The German general in question heroically ignored the order and Paris, as well as Notre Dame, was saved.

Carefully restored saints.

Now Notre Dame is back. President Macron and his wife toured the immaculately rebuilt building and then invited all the construction workers, architects, artisans, art restorers, farmers, carpenters, loggers, fire-proofers, and administrators who worked on the project together to the center of the building (which for the moment has no pews) and thanked them for doing such a wonderful job. I’m not a very sentimental person but I admit I got a little teary-eyed.

I watched a CNN anchor questioning one of the fund-raisers for the project. He said, ”You raised much more money than was needed. There was no hint of scandal, no embezzlement, the project came in on time, and on budget. What on earth went right?”

In these days of corruption and sleaze it is so refreshing to see that we can get together and do an amazing project with dedication and incredible skill.

You don’t have to be religious to appreciate Notre Dame. It’s not a miracle. It’s what we humans can do when we decide to do it. Lmc

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The Eyes Don’t Have It Yet

Ok it’s a bit 
exaggerated but this gives you the idea of how the painting looks 
more yellowy.

A recent cataract operation feels like a yellow film has been removed from my world. In one eye. I have to wait to get the other one done.

So now the left eye sees everything slightly yellow and the 
right eye sees everything slightly blue.

For an artist this is peculiar. Older paintings look different now. Should I go 
back and adjust the color? Does anyone else even notice?

Color is ubiquitous for us humans. It evokes and defines emotions. It gets you on the right train. It signifies political parties.

And this one is more blue. Weird, right? Also kind of cool. This painting is 
The Marais in the Rain, 2.25’ x 3’, €875. Click here to see the real one.

I’m unsettled by my new uncertainty. Maybe this is a good thing for an artist. 
Until the other eye 
gets done that is, then once again I won’t know the difference.

This is article is taken from Living & Painting in France, my monthly newsletter/ magazine that talks about my life in rural Brittany as an expat artist. Click here for your subscription. It’s free!

When Art is Not The Answer

Walter can’t get into this bar.

Small french villages are 
often depopulated when youngsters grow up and look for work in the big cities. Big box stores and supermarkets make it easy to buy your groceries and hardware in out-of-the town industrial estates, so the beautiful centuries-old centers of town are left sad and empty. This is not good.

Some towns have resorted to putting up paintings of traditional butchers and bakers and cafes in the windows of the old stores. While the paintings themselves are beautifully done, the symbolism is forlorn. Instead of trying to revitalize the local economy, they are falling back on images of the past.

France is known to be a high-tax society. In return you get free education; free or cheap excellent healthcare; and a generous pension. But on the ground it’s difficult for small businesses to stay in business with such an onerous and complicated tax requirement. The cost of employing people can be prohibitive and couples often open a small business and instead of employing more workers, will toil fourteen hours a day to keep the enterprise afloat.

Surely there is a better way. Perhaps some creative thinking could create a scheme where tiny businesses could catch a break and allow the economic centers of French towns to chug along and revitalize the life of the villages?

These small villages are lovely. All they need is more activity. Even if it means, for once, that art is not the answer. Just a thought. Lmc

This is article is taken from Living & Painting in France, my monthly newsletter/magazine that talks about my life in rural Brittany as an expat artist. Click here for your subscription. It’s free!

Miracle Medium – The Nose Knows

You walk into your art studio, you smell the turpentine. It’s one of those evocative experiences like the smell of frying bacon or cut grass. I also use a lot of Liquin, a fossil fuel-based, thick medium that adds a light, paste-like structure to the paint, and makes it dry faster. It’s not as pungent as turpentine but definitely has a chemical smell. White Spirit acts more like turpentine. It supposedly doesn’t have a smell but it still gives me a headache. All of them do.

Mature women have a very acute sense of smell. BTW Why did nature think this was a good idea?

All of these smells create the sense of “art studio” for me.

The Miracle Medium series from Michael Harding gives us a new way to use painting mediums. Miracle Medium is a set of plant-based, eco-friendly mediums that do not use fossil fuels and have almost no odor. It’s pretty weird. Even though you’re painting with oil, it feels like you’re watercoloring. You have the lush consistency of the oil paint but you dip your brush into what feels and acts like water.

That’s not entirely true. There are three versions: Resin Oil Wax, Oil Paint Medium, and plain old Miracle Medium. The Miracle Medium and the Oil Paint versions feel more watery. The consistency of Resin Wax is more like light cream. So far this one is my favorite.

I haven’t done a comprehensive test of each medium under controlled conditions because, honestly, it’s too boring. I’ve just been using them on some paintings. So far so good. No headaches and it makes the oil paint very slick and accessible to feel. That means learning new ways to manipulate the color and different brush techniques.

You can also use it to clean your brushes.

The very big downside to all this is that it doesn’t dry quickly. The other solvents speed drying a lot, Miracle Medium does not speed it at all, in fact it may extend the drying time. If you want to do a last minute touch up before a show, for instance, Miracle Medium will not help you.

So I’m still experimenting. But avoiding headaches is a HUGE plus. I just have to make it work for me. The lack of the romance of chemical smells in the studio requires some getting used to, but I suspect I can get used to it.

Try it out. Less horrible smell, new ways to paint, saving the planet. It's worth a shot. Just don't hold your breath while you're waiting for it to dry. Lmc

This article is taken from Living & Painting in France, my monthly petite pdf magazine about, well, living and painting in France. Check it out here. It’s free!

A Delightful Summer Cocktail

A Lulu is a drink invented by a group of us sitting around in the pub. It's based on a cocktail of Prosecco and Aperol which I discovered in Paris and is refreshing and absolutely delicious. A Lulu is a combination of Prosecco and Cointreau and if you really want to get fancy you can add a mint leaf. It's named after a flirty waitress who charmed one of our friends and annoyed his wife. It was delightful and I recommend it for these hot summer evenings.We enjoyed our Lulus. Then we forgot all about them and went back to beer and wine. Not really a cocktail crowd.

This article is taken from Living & Painting in France, my monthly petite pdf magazine about, well, living and painting in France. Check it out here for more articles about an artist in rural Brittany. It’s free!

When Things Get Hairy

You can draw from life, from
a photo or
from your imagination. Lately I have been sticking
to life, mainly because it’s sitting right in front of me. Case in point, in our neighborhood we are short on barbers. My husband’s favorite cutter retired a little while ago so when we travel he tends to get
a haircut wherever we
go. Here’s a collection
of coiffure drawings from our travels.

This story is taken from Living & Painting in France, my petite magazine that is all about living as an ex-pat painter in the French countryside. Sign up here for your subscription. It’s free!

We Have a New Cafe in Town

Maelle, proprietesse, & Cindy 
who runs Les our local boulangerie, Delices de Callac, 
in their dirndyls.

Our neighbors have opened a cafe in our nearby tiny metropolis of Callac. He is German, she is Colombian, so their cafe is Germano/Colombiano. It’s got a Colombian name, Cafe Fredonia (Kaffee Fredonia), which sounds a little German but is in fact a town in Colombia.

It's also the country run by Groucho Marx in Duck Soup.

Cafe Fredonia serves traditional German Kaffee und Kuchen but with Colombian coffee. The decor is ornate and elegant, a shift in tone compared with our other local cafes. They’ve only been open for several weeks and they are still finding their feet. But I think it’s a great start for local sweet-toothed coffee-lovers.

My only issue is that they’ve decorated with interior with picture frames with no paintings. This needs to be addressed! Meanwhile I will be stopping by for a sweet nibble when I get the chance. Nothing like a little buzz in the countryside. Lmc

Connect on facebook. Or just come down and have some cake!

This was taken from my monthly petite magazine called Living & Painting in France. Click here for your free subscription.

Gallivanting Again

Since the end of lock-down I have been doing a lot of traveling. Last time it was New York, this time it was Ireland — both family visits with work and side trips in between.

Arriving on the south coast of Ireland, just outside of Cork.

Where we live in Brittany it’s an easy ferry ride from Roscoff to the south coast of Ireland.

We stayed a couple of nights in Cork where my husband had his first job in journalism back in the Jurassic days. He took me around to the pubs he was thrown out of and his beautiful old office building that had been torn down to be rebuilt as a Next store.

Cork is a classy little city that clusters around the river Lee. The buildings include the architectural stylings of former invaders who stuck around and built for a while. Some older fortifications date back far and reflect the various battling Irish tribes and Vikings who kept invading over the centuries. These days it’s just a five minute walk to the health food store.

Walter & the Echo Boy, a newspaper boy in Cork..

A short four-hour, hop-and-skip to Belfast was next on the list. We stayed with the in-laws who were in fine fettle. They are a particularly charming bunch and we had a very jolly time outside of one or two political scuffles. However we made a pact to not get too brassy about our disagreements. Honestly this is good advice for the world. Maybe a few less wars?

Nephew Robin with his famous gin collection.

Belfast is in great shape. It’s been a while since there’s been any major catholic/protestant violence, for which I am profoundly grateful. The city loves murals and in the old days they used to favor fallen victims and rabble-rousing political leaders. These days they are more likely to be arty confections or upscale advertising hoardings. And you can’t throw a brick without hitting a mention of the Titanic (it was built in Belfast for all you Titanic newbies). Some steps in a better direction.

The murals in Belfast are getting more benevolent.

Heading back home we stayed a couple of nights in Kilkenny, famed for it’s castle and design center. The castle is magnificent. It has been renovated and re-purposed from being an hereditary estate to it’s current role of tourist attraction where it is one of the most visited spots in the country. The town specializes in charming little pubs with traditional Irish music. I love Irish music though I think we heard In The Rare Old Times at least three times in three different pubs one night.

The design center features local artisans who create knives, leather goods, pottery, as well as Irishy, touristy stuff like flat caps and woolly scarves. The most fascinating section for me was an exhibition of the Cartoon Saloon studio that created four Oscar nominated animations including the Wolfwalker. The exhibit showed prints of the original artwork used in the final movies, plus printed books that told the stories of the making of the works. Click here 
for more info.

Now I’m on the ferry heading back to le vieux pays. I’m looking forward to a long summer of artwork and not going anywhere. Travel is great. So is staying home and painting. Lmc

Sign on a tomb in St. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny.

These stories are taken from Living & Painting in France, my monthly magazine about, you guessed it, living and painting in France. Sign up here for your free subscription.

Names and Other Misleading Fripperie

In Brittany we have the Breton language that is different from French. It contains a lot of “z”s and “k”s and other valuable scrabble letters.

We saw a convoluted restaurant sign on our way to Roscoff, the ferry port where we were headed on our way 
to Ireland.

Frogiz! The Brits call the French frogs. The spelling is slightly Breton. And it’s a French restaurant. I know. Hilarious. Sigh.

Other silly store names we saw on our trip, the Frisky Whiskey Bar, and Scoozi — an Italian/Irish mashup? We live in interesting times.

Department of Hot Waiters

Jack, taking care of hapless visitors.

Jack Power, no relation to Powers Whiskey, is a very friendly and helpful bartender/waiter in the Shelbourne 
pub in Cork where we spent some happy hours drinking in the ambiance and the Guinness.

These stories are taken from Living & Painting in France, my monthly magazine about, you guessed it, living and painting in France. Sign up here for your free subscription.

And They’re Off!

Yes they dressed for the occasion!
Very classy.

An old tradition was given new life in Paris with the resurrection of the famous Waiter’s Race. Uniformed waiters, old and young, balanced trays of coffee and croissants and raced through the Marais to compete for prizes including five-star dinners and Olympic tickets.

This tradition started in 1914. It was canceled in 2012 for lack of funding, but the Olympics peaked interest again. Once more the sweating but well-dressed waiters were back and huffing. You're judged by how much liquid you have spilled and you can't run. Any lost cups or trays along the way lose points.

The Paris waiters tend to be a deft lot. They weave between chattering customers and tightly-packed tables and deliver complicated orders with a smile. No need to train for the event, their everyday jobs would challenge an Olympic athlete.

The Parisians loved it. The French do a like a public spectacle (see Madame Guillotine) and this one delivered with heads intact.

This article is taken from my monthly newsletter/magazine, Living & Painting in France. Click here for a free subscription.

Supercharged Apathy

Cafe Rouge. Hanging out in Place du Tertre at the top of Montmartre in Paris.

For the past eight years I have taught an online graphic design course. This is for my old university where I worked when I lived in New York.

When Covid hit, educators all over the world were frog-marched into online teaching. With a stupendous effort by the enormous tribe of teachers and administrators, education limped through the pandemic. This was not entirely successful. While plenty of kids passed their classes, lots of others didn’t or were handed sub-par classes that were a shadow of a true education.

I went from teaching students who chose to learn online to students who were compelled to. Some of the students kind of closed down. And some of them are still closed down. They avoid in-person interactions and have a tendency to do the minimum asked of them. The computer is their problem as well as their escape.

Digital life is draining our creativity. It’s draining our impulse to interact. It’s harming our personal skills. It’s making easy, reactive emotions feel like normal life.

Don’t get me wrong, my students are almost universally lovely people. But I feel an undercurrent of lassitude which is difficult to overcome. Maybe this started before the pandemic but Covid supercharged it. Can you supercharge apathy? Can you combat it?

We as a society and as individuals need to take this on board. Talk to people! Live in the real world! And paint with actual paint. Lmc

This story comes from Living & Painting in France, my monthly pdf magazine. Click here for your free subscription.

The Bright Lights of North London

On a recent trip to North London we took the family to a place called God’s Own Junkyard. It is an industrial estate where The Wild Card Brewery and Mother’s Ruin Gin Factory live alongside BJ Electronics and Vauxhall Spares.

But the star attraction is God’s Own Junkyard which is simply an extraordinary collection of old neon signs.

You walk into a series of dark rooms with high ceilings and the signs are crammed on the wall space in every direction. They evoke a certain kitschy era of marketing and head straight to your subconscious with bright lights proclaiming out loud the availability of Sex, Food, Booze, Money, Freedom, and Sex.

You can also see how this mode of communication through neon was co-opted by emotional and spiritual institutions like Love and Religion. Then there are the stalwarts like Coca Cola, Bar, and the ever-popular Diner.

Neon was discovered by the British scientist Sir William Ramsay in 1898. By the 1920s, using neon for advertising displays really took off. Over the years the use of neon signs has taken on an air of cheapness and seediness. For the most part it is not used in classier establishments, except for a discreet sign for the hotel bar. Neon implies lowlifes and darker urges. The swankier set tend to pretend they don’t exist, although if you are wealthy, Sex, Food, and Booze are always on tap.

Neon signs shout out to the realities of the human soul. They know who you are, and you know where you are. There is no ambiguity. They are also very pretty.

Check out God’s Own Junkyard next time you’re in London and you need a break from museums and expensive restaurants. Lmc

www.godsownjunkyard.co.uk/

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