Sadly, this year's travel plans have been supplanted with overdue home projects, including the hanging and cataloging of my personal collection of paintings and other artwork. So this summer, in lieu of an overseas getaway, I could only gaze wistfully at framed pictures as I hung them—many of them reminding me of my favorite travel destinations (and vacations gone by). Let me share a few of them with you. Alas, this shall be the extent of my romantic journeys for Summer 2020. On the whole, I have little to complain of. In the meantime, I'll enjoy a few more "little journeys,' gazing at my pictures of my favorite places.
On our first trip together to Paris, my partner and I began to recognize a recurring art gallery poster, usually stapled to one of Paris's many Colonnes Morris—those handsome free-standing "huts" (about the size of a large phone booth) that provide an organized and contained space for advertisements. It showed a young lad, resting astride a ten speed bicycle, waving to his friends in the distance who are playing along the waterfront. Upon investigation, we determined that the poster was promoting the works of a Breton artist, Alain Gaudin, then on-view at the Galerie Amyot.
We wended our way down the narrow Rue Saint-Louis en Île on the enchanting Île Saint-Louis, the smaller of Paris's two islands which float in the River Seine. Though it's hard to get lost on the tiny island (there are so few streets), every expedition there feels like an adventure-back-in-time. To our delight, the picture which had been used to promote the show (shown above) was still in-store. We bought it and happily brought it home as our souvenir of Paris.
Alain Gaudin was born in Nantes (1951), the important industrial port city along the Loire River in the greater Bretagne (Brittany) region. He studied and began his career in interior design. In 1970, he began painting and, by 1980, he was able to make his living doing it. Gaudin paints scenes from the beaches and ports of Brittany. This painting, titled Le Signe du Cycliste ("The Cyclist's Wave"), captures a group of young friends gathering at the mouth of the Port du Pouliguen, along the Atlantic coast and the Bay of Biscay.
Though our Greenwich Village store is now permanently closed, LEO Design is still alive and well! Please visit our on-line store where we continue to sell Handsome Gifts (www.LEOdesignNYC.com).
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