{The Art of Putting Things in Order}

 

   

  
  
  
  

{Who is the Woman behind Hollande?}

The new first lady of France, Valérie Trierweiler, knows the world of politics by her careeras as journalist, but has not yet decided how to embody her new role, following the electionof her partner Francois Hollande as President.

         

     The new first lady confided in an interview with AFP that hopes to play its role "seriously". "But at the same time, I have no clear idea yet. What is certain is that I need time to reflect on what will be needed. ", she said.

   

     

     Born in modest half of an invalid father and a mother employed in a skating rink in Angers (west), Valérie Trierweiler has long been a stranger to the general public. Not so the political world, and that for more than twenty years has covered politics for the French weekly Paris Match. In that publication the young Valerie Massonneau met her first husband, Denis Trierweiler, sometime collaborator and translator of German philosophers, who bore him three children. Since 2005, he also interviews politicians in the private television channel Direct 8.

    

     In October 2010, emerged from the shadows, when François Hollande, former Socialist Party leader in the middle of the wilderness, told Gala magazine: "Valerie is the woman of my life." The declaration of candidacy of his partner in March 2011 changed everything for her. In the fall of 2011, for ethical reasons, had to abandon their policy issuance Direct 8 to go to interview stars of the show. He also had to refrain from participating in writing conferences Paris Match, without leaving the magazine.

    

     Valérie Trierweiler also had to confront the political presence of Ségolène Royal,Socialist candidate for president in 2007 and former partner of François Hollande, with whom the president now had four children.

  

{From left to right: Carla Bruni-Sarcozy, Valérie Treirweiler and Ségolène Royal}

     I find in the new first lady the perfect french charm that I love. It is not easy to assume that role, and also happen to Carla Bruni. But his discrepción and good taste is quite admirated for me.

    

{Happy Mother´s Day}

Today, in Spain, we celebrate the Mother´s Day. I can´t help to dedicated a post to my own one. She is the light of my life, if she wouldn´t exist, I would die... It is like if I´d hadn´t got an arm, or a leg.

     Thanks for your support, your words, your attention, and all the time you spend on me and not in you.

     I love you so much...

{Prelude to a Prize}

 

Actress Grace Kelly goes by car to the Kodak Theatre for the 1955´s Academy Awards. Miss Kelly winned the Oscar for the 'Best Actress' role that year.

{Photographer: George Silk for Life Magazine} 
   
 

{'La Mer de Pianos', 2011}

Short film about Marc Manceaux, the owner of the oldest piano shop in Paris.

{Directed and edited by: Tom Wrigglesworth & Mathieu Cuvelier}


   

{The Golden Age}

                            
To think that  the past time was better is a waste of time. As it is discussed in the last Woody Allen´s movie "Midnight in Paris" (2011), many people have a melancholy nature about what is related to the "old" and dream with living in other eras. In that way of being, that many people share, Allen gives his own scientific term:  the "Golden Age syndrome". 


                      Leaving aside the Freudian psychology, is also relevant to analyze why some people with these characteristics decide to express their frustration (if they have skills or sensitivity to it) through Art. In all its forms: writing novels based in past Eras, painting pictures or illustrating scenes from past times, designing fashion inspirated in the past, or even many film directors have a recurrent theme in past events of the story history. 


                This is wonderful and extraordinary as well. Because there are many more ways (unless somebody finally invent a time machine) to transport us to another moment in history.


                               

May,  4th. 2012.

            I have always said that God was wrong with me. I should have been born, at least, when were still rules (I love all the rules). When the Beauty of the ordinary, the details and good manners were more imporants that the economic problems which now flood the media. Because, well...uhm, in the past also existed problems. But unlike today, people took tea in good china.

           

           I realize that what I have said above is ridiculously utopian, and taking into account the reality that we have got,especially in Europe, so I know this can be ridiculous. I am aware of that. Times have changed (Yes, ok I know...) and for a XXI century´s mother with five children, working and with a so large list of things to do like "making a tree costume for her 5 years old boy, the last thing that she has got is time for tea in a cup of china (Not even she can have a tea!). 


             


       But precisely at this point I invite you to reflect about it. Humanity had never had a so tecnologycall avanced life and with a lot of artificial instruments which make (or try to do) our  life eassy  like we have today (as free of social ties but in the other side, too much stressful and so evenfrightening with too higher levels than our grandparents were)  

          

          Does not the change of lifestyle by many technological facilities and practices, and new ways of living (seaside, duplex, houses or flat, or lofts)  has made us to forget to having time to enjoy of what really matters? That moment when the soul is totally alone with our thoughts, which invites every of us to find moments of "absolute clarity", which is oneself totally alone with soul and mind, and also connected with other forms of life that nature gives, is not possible today, except for some lucky people.

          

         Only God knows that I would change all the freedoms and advancements for to have time for study, read, reflect, philosophize and feel my heartbeat . And makes my talent to work with all the time in the world. 

Loving the simple things,

Carolina.

                           

         

{Photo Sequence; Grace and Lizanne}

Princess Grace holds on her younger sister arm, Lizanne Levine, in New York City circa 1958.

 

{Photographer:  Robert W. Kelley for Life Magazine}


   

{A Painter Review: Sir Helbert James Gunn (1893 - 1964)}

                           

Herbert James Gunn, later known as Sir James Gunn, achieved fame as a distinguished portraitist; he was also a talented painter of landscapes and seascapes.

     Born in Glasgow, the son of a prosperous draper, he began his training at the Glasgow School of Art and the Edinburgh College of Art.   He then continued his studies in Paris at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens.  At the outbreak of the First World War, Gunn enlisted with the Artist's Rifles and served with the 10th Battalion Scottish Rifles in 1917. 

      

   

                                          'La Plage, Étretat'. 1914. 

When the War ended, Gunn settled in London and established himself as an eminent and sought after portraitist.   In January 1919, he married a widow, Gwendoline Charlotte Thorne, with whom he had three daughters.  They divorced in 1927 and in 1929 Gunn married Pauline Miller, the model for some of his most famous portraits, with whom he had a son and daughter.

            

     

'The Raft', c.1919. The location of the scene is most likely Bexhill-on-Sea.  During the 1920s, Gunn, his first wife Gwendoline Thorne (whom he married in 1919) and their three daughters Diana, Elizabeth and Pauline, took frequent holidays on the Sussex coast.  

                       Portrait of Pauline, the artist´s second wife. c.1925.


          


   

Portrait of group. 1929. Sir Herbert happened upon his children by chance at London Zoo where he was preparing animal sketches for a mural. The children, Pauline, Diana and Elizabeth, were with their nurse, who agreed to return with them for future sittings in Regent’s Park. The nurse features in the picture alongside the children.

                  

                                             'Pauline waiting', 1939.

He exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Grosvenor Gallery and the Royal Academy, London.  He won a gold medal at the Paris Salon in 1939 and was elected President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1953. 

           

           

'Conversation piece at the Royal Lodge, Windsor'. 1950. After a successful career, Gunn later became a member of the Royal Academy and in 1953/4 he was invited to paint Queen Elizabeth II in her Coronation robes, a picture that hangs in the Royal Collection to this day. 

In 1956 he was elected an Associate member of the Royal Academy and made a full member in 1961.  Gunn was awarded a Knighthood for services to the arts in 1963.  The artist died a year later.

     A major retrospective of his work was held at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh in 1994.

            

{So this is Love; My Grandparents}

Old picture of my grandparents before getting married. From left to right: My granfather Oscar (1936-1981), my (so loved) grandmother Elsa (b.1940) and her older sister Yolanda (b.1936). Parque Santa Telmo, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, circa 1956. Spain.

       Some years afther in Seville (Spain). They were so beutiful...

{Hello May!}