Aix-en-Provence

Before my course started I made the most of Marseille’s fantastic location to go and explore the cities, towns, and villages that surround it. Aix-en-Provence is only half an hour away from Marseille, but I could not find two cities as opposite as the two; historically, culturally, and most of all socially! The habitants of the two ‘dislike’ each other to put it nicely. Aix is very very pretty, picturesque, almost too beautiful, Marseille is much more of a real city, that gets dirty, almost but too dirty unlike Aix which happens to also be very bourgeois and conservative. Aix is the second most expensive city in France after Paris and there is also a certain snobbishness just like the infamous parisians.
Although I have to say, I admit to being a typical Aix-en-Provence sucker, I love it! I usually don’t like to use the word delightful in case of sounding ridiculously posh but wandering round the old town of Aix really is such a delight, it is so picturesque and it is a very uplifting town (unlike Marseille) the streets are flooded with cafes, boutiques, antique shops, very overpriced clothes shops, trillions of tempting restaurants, it just has everything a stereotypical tourist would seek! So this does explain why everyone abroad comes to Aix and knows of Aix no one really goes to Marseille. I love both for their own reasons, but I find it very refreshing having Aix so close by , if I ever have enough of grubby Marseille I can just hop on a bus and stroll around the old town of Aix, taking a note of amazing market day on Saturday!

St-Remy : Saint-Paul de Mausolée Asylum

Vincent Van Gogh arrived at the Saint-Paul de Mausolée asylum, out of his own will, from Arles. He was fascinated by the quality of the light and the beauty of the landscapes in Saint-Rémy which really inspired him and his year in the asylum ended up being the most creative of his life, he carried out 143 oil paintings and more than 100 drawings in a mere 53 weeks.
When I visited the hospital in the beginning of October, I found it a really touching and endearing experience. The hospital is still in fact running, but there is a section cut off for tourists where you can go and visit Van Gogh's room and a little exhibition of his time there has thus been set up. It was all so peaceful, quite eary and disconcerting, and looking at the landscape around nothing seems to have changed since the time of Van Gogh's years, you can still recognise the swirly trees in his paintings and the different shades of green in the fields

. Visiting the monastery was really an amazing oppurtunity I would strongly advise anyone to go and see it!

VISIT TO ARLES

View of the beautiful Rhones in the city of Arles

BOUILLABAISSE

This is the famous dish of marseille, it doesn't look great and sounds like a boring fish stew but its all about whats actually in it! It used to be a simple fisherman peasant dish and now it costs an arm and a leg because of what goes into it, 7 different fish including scorpion fish and monk fish, its all saffron infused and you put crutons with rouille (a saffron spicy mayonnaise..divine) and lots of grated gruyere. The flavours of the provence are all there, all the herbs, orange infusion , spices saffron, i love it !

DRIVING THROUGH THE BEAUTIFUL PROVENCE TO MARSEILLE!!

Wow thank god I passed my driving test a few months ago, I would have really missed out on the amazing drive through the Provence to the Cote d’Azur, arriving into Marseille, this area of France really does live up to its name! Once you’ve passed Lyon you can actually feel the air is different, without sounding over dramatic it’s true! The vegetation becomes really lush, olive groves and vineyards start appearing and rough stony villages dotted around everything, and my personal favourite, the tip point tree (I don't know it's real name!) which

I think is the emblem tree of the provence that you can recognize in Van Gogh’s paintings, I love just watching the tip sway gently from side to side in the wind, I spotted this tree and I knew I was in the famous beautiful Provence!

Recent work of mine before the exchange

Paintings

DRAWINGS

Most of these are quick imaginary sketches inspired by surrealist automatism - originally a means of surrealist expression where the pencil moves freely on the paper, freed from any rational control (the surrealists wanted a technique that managed to dig deep in the human subconscious). My drawings started off as little doodles or squiggles, and then I gradually saw images and recognisable forms shaping, so I progressively became more in control of what I saw and was producing and would end up with funny random surrealist images and pictures.