women condition

Living in a kindfull environment, better where women are relatively respected, I couldn't imagine that the condition of women still is a hot subject. I was convinced after almost fifty years of battle that things have changed and women are definitely able to embrace all kinds of places in society as men. In appearance everything is done, but nothing is less true. My mother had the chance to be married to a comprehensive husband, and as a liberated woman, she could develop her intellect and qualities for a career as a businesswoman. I believe my father was absolutely proud of his advanced and beautiful wife. In such a middle, I was myself undeniably pushed to make a career for myself. In order to make a link with the following generation, my daughter became a SuperJet pilot. In Europe, as in other places in the world, it is not rare to see women at the top of their country and become prime minister. But if a minority of women have enviable places in government, business, and other central positions, this is only hiding the majority of bad women's conditions. Looking around me, I can't deny that reality is totally different. In fact, there is not a single country in the world today where women have the same opportunities as men, and although progress has been made in some areas in recent years, women are still disadvantaged in economic and political life. In my country it's still common that women gain 20% less than their male homologues for the same studies and qualifications. Worse are the conditions in fighting countries. Incidents of violence against women increase, and rape is often used systematically as a weapon of war. Its impossible to traverse the African continent without an enveloping sense of horror and despair at the carnage amongst women; battling, excision, vilifying, and marrying off women are still in use. The Asian continent is not better; human trafficking, sex, pornography, and sexuality-based attacks are notably common.
There is a lot of struggle to deliver for equities and the importance of working together to improve women's lives around the world.

Contrasts

As a child playing with colors rapidly, I noticed the harmony and beauty by juxtaposing contrasts. The most evident are black/white, dark/light, and warm and cold. But if you read the elements of colors by Johannes Itten, you'll see a lot more possibilities. In fact, everything is a question of contrasts. This allows us to take one's bearings, and life should be terribly monotonous without it. Its by differences our world becomes comprehensible. How should we appreciate silence if we don't know what a noisy environment is?
Humans always must be able to compare and have a scale of values. In films, paintings, and photography, its with differences that we can situate objects and persons in space by creating an illusion of relief or profundity.
What's true for Art is always true for Society. Why should we banish differences of culture, way of life, mentalities, traditions, religions, social levels, and so on? One of the most important rights of humans should be to be ourselves!

mode and fashion

The portrait I painted from Sonia Rykiel gives me mixed sentiments. I'm proud of the career of this characterful woman and the charisma her face reflects. Fashion is not especially a kindful environment. In the years she started her business as a young woman among a majority of men was certainly not easily done. Nowadays extravagance is not rare, and despite being wearable sometimes, I agree it can be very artistic.
Last 28 September, the opening of the new shop Rykiel Woman defrayed the chronic in proposing the next fashion, the sale of erotic objects. Its a strange idea for a famous fashion house, and however, it does not have the same carriage as a sex shop! Its a place of sensuality and pleasure, associating classical products with other more avant-garde and provocative. Only the subsoil of the shop offers chic sex toys. This space is fortunately not free; you must be escorted by a shop assistant and it is forbidden to underage people.
Nathalie Rykiel, the girl of Sonia who directs the new shop, doesn't contradict the fact that her mother always has been provocative. From the beginning, her creation scandalizes but has never been real common. The daughter is scared of a new scandal defying the market another time, and finally this adventurous step has been accepted with the actual very enlarged mentalities. Next, I fear we find it absolutely normal to be able to buy sex toys together with a lot of other objects and presents relating to love without any shame. I'm still astounded at the manner in which mentalities change faster than advancing technology.
For interested people: Rykiel Woman
4, rue de Grenelle
75006- Paris (France)

Lost Fight

Just like other years, birds are singing in the trees covered with flowers, and narcissus are growing in the green grass of the backyard, but I can't help that this year isn't like another, and I don't feel like the usual spring flowing through my blood. It took time before I noticed why: its a year I lost my bosom friend, and evidently I didn't reject the pain yet. In spite of the age difference (17), we could handle with each other a real unconditional friendship. I don't remember if we quarreled about something. She is the kind of friend you can never replace.
About two years ago she suffered from back pain, and her walking was every time very painful. Her toubib diagnosed spinal stenosis, and he doesn't let her take time for reflection about a surgical intervention. So an orthopedist took the job to operate on her and placed stalks and pins. From the beginning, she recovered very badly, and when she returned home, she couldn't come above the pain. Her last Christmas was horrible. Nothing could stop her pain, even the patches with morphine. Unhelpfully, she returned to her surgeon, who decided to reopen 3 months after the first intervention and drop away all the material he placed. But here started the final battle. She couldn't recover, being too much weakened. It seems afterwards she got that famous clinical MRSA (multiple resistant Staphylococcus aureus), against whom they don't have any remedy. From that moment, I saw the very active and frightful woman she was giving up the battle. In her very last moments I wasn't allowed to greet her, so sick she was. I can't drop away from her mind, though we have all deserted her.
Where is the time between the two world wars? The antibiotics and vaccinations started making miracles and saving so many lives. Some diseases were eradicated totally in our countries with their efficacy. But then came the time when doctors prescribed unconsequentially those types of medicines in such a manner that on one side they had to force the prescriptions (more and more resistant pathogens) and on the other side they caused an imbalance between the pathogens themselves (the most resistant could develop without the concurrence of other pathogens).
And today we are evidently losing the whole battle; viruses like Sida, Chikungunya, H5N1 (bird influenza), and so on. We are disarmed momentarily and perhaps for a long time. Again we are in the desert and hope their is on earth somewhere a good working brain who finds the solution.

landscapes

Respectively: Le Jardin de Maubuisson, Pointoise by Paul Cézanne (1877) and Potager, arbres en fleurs, Pointoise by Camille Pisarro (1877)

Weekly I'm painting a subject in Academy. Last week our subject was "Landscape". At first, I was disappointed because this subject didn't interest me. How to treat a landscape in a modern way? neither worked out as a picture, nor too abstract as most painters do nowadays? First I wanted to find a landscape that could inspire me to paint in atelier. My ideas slipped away to all this fine artist of preceding century, catching in a subtle manner the essentials of colours and forms. My eyes fell on a review with the nice landscapes of Vincent Van Gogh with his well-known way of mixing colours and appearing full paintbrushes that give movement to all his paintings. Delightful, but I don't want to imitate him.
Actually runs a famous exposition in Paris with 60 paintings of Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro (1865-1885). Imagined by the granddaughter of Camille, conservator of the Modern Museum of Modern Art in New York, in homage to the friendship between both painters and at the same time to commemorate the centenary of the death of Cézanne. They met in Paris in 1861 during their artist education. After ten years of fighting and deceptions, their friendship drives them to collaborate. Paul Cézanne joins Camille Pissarro in Pontoise, and for almost twenty years they are painting side by side in nature or in the atelier. Its the products of this collaboration you can visit till 28 May 2006 in Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The style of both is so different: large, tumultuous paintbrushes for Cézanne and subtle light touches for Pissarro. I'll certainly visit the museum; meanwhile, I'm no longer rabid against the subject.

water

While painting flowing water, I couldn't help but think of all the benefits we have from potable water. How can I neglect the happiness and chance I have not missing it each day? Maybe in the future it could be a world problem. Its lack already causes the death of 15 persons in the world every 60 seconds!!! I believe there's among 1.1 billion people who miss potable water, and 2.4 billion suffer from deficient hygiene and hydric diseases by water need. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, malaria, diarrhea, and so on are directly concerned with water scarcity. That's why potable water is and stays for the coming years the prime humanitarian urgency. Last 22 March was International Day of Water. But here in Europe I didn't see much about the subject. It seems to be overwhelmed by the social disorders in France with the strikes around the promulgation of their PCE (prime employment contract) and the collection for the fight against the Sida. In Belgium, the government loses time in quarreling about French and Dutch communes around Brussels, inserts new dangerous airways to fly above the capital  to divide flight trajectories between the Dutch and French populations, and how to equilibrate the budget by submitting severe budgetary pressure to the working-class people. What a slush??? I'm thinking this time of all the victims of water with the tsunami, the hurricanes, and the inundations. Its time to wake up and take conscience of humanity. We are all embarked on the same ship, and we have to fight all together in the same way!!!