The colours of my life – Part 4/7 – BLACK & WHITE & GREY

This 7-part series on my blog covers the colours of my life, or more precisely of my childhood memories, a great source of inspiration for my art. You’ll find more posts from that series on this page.

Light & Shadow

The perfect black & white & grey contrasts that I see in nature come naturally from light & shadow, from strong daylight and its opposite, the deep shadows, particularly on those cold, crisp winter days in the city, or during an autumnal foggy morning in the countryside.

And there’s also the magic of a snowfall which turns the ordinary world into a white wonderland.

Musical black and white

Piano keys That’s the most beautiful combination of black and white that I can think of! Having started to play the piano from a young age, I love the freedom that these 88 keys give me to explore the realms of sound and music. This is a colour that is so deeply associated with my most intimate and magical musical moments: deciphering the first prelude by Bach or the Valse de l’Adieu by Chopin, improvising totally free with my voice teacher Anne, savouring Murray Perahia’s interpretation of Mozart’s sonatas, witnessing Hélène Grimaud’s wonderful concert in the Laieszhalle in Hamburg last year or lying down in the dark listening to Keith Jarret’s Köln concert. I get tears in my eyes when I think of the beauty that piano keys carry for me.

Sheet music linked to piano keys above! Sheet music has magic in it for those who can read it, pretty much like any book in any language. Like poetry that needs to be savoured spoken out loud, sheet music just longs to be played! I’m so grateful to whomever invented the codification of music!

Jazz! Somehow, to me, jazz is a mix of blacks and whites and greys. The black and white photos of jazzmen and women who have made history, the dark clubs where jazz used to be played, the black and white films, all of this has a black and white feel, although the music itself can be sooo colourful!

Concerts: from the shiny black lacquer of a wonderful grand piano to the formal black and white of the outfits worn by musicians, chorists and conductor to the sheet music on silvery holders, these are familiar musical shades too.

Edith Piaf, Georges Moustaki, Barbara, Jacques Brel … and their incredible chansons in French. How many tears of gratefulness, sadness, bittersweetness I have cried listening to your voices!

Comic strips and cartoons

The first cartoons that I saw were probably from my grandfather Pépé’s weekly satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné. I didn’t understand most of them at first because they were of a political nature … and I didn’t want to ask questions. And then those from Plantu in Le Monde. Same thing. Not for little people…

Then there was in my Dad’s daily newspaper Sud Ouest some cartoons, either from the Peanuts, with Snoopy and Charlie Brown and all their black & white friends with funny hair styles and looks.

And then my favourite comic strip ever in black and white: Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Calvin is that imaginative little boy who does not have a traditional teddy bear as cuddly toy but a tiger, Hobbes. And Hobbes turns into a life companion in Calvin’s eyes, powerful and pouncing like a real tiger, with many philosophical moments and the great drawings of Bill Watterson. A sure mood-lifter!

I could not talk about black and white drawings without mentioning the cartoons from the New Yorker magazine? The weekly black and white treats are always a delight and I love the cartoon competition at the back too… If you don’t know these, you have to!

And of course, there is Sempé, the French cartoonist who created le Petit Nicolas and a whole world of black and white cartoons which I absolutely love, full of nostalgy and capturing little moments of everyday situations with a gentle touch.

Other childhood black & white & grey memories

– The black & white photos of my childhood with the seventies looks!
– The festive white tablecloths and napkins of family reunions, embroidered with the family initials
– The black on white letters to read at the annual medical check up to make sure I didn’t need glasses
– My mum’s black hair
– My Pépé’s tabby cats with their black and grey stripes that I’d love to cuddle on my knees
Blackbirds, crows, seagulls, magpies and swallows – all the birds that I learnt to recognise early on
– Disney memories; Baghera, the black panther, of the Jungle Book and the 101 dalmatians
– The photo “the Kiss” by Georges Doineau and similar romantic black and white photos of the Fifties or Sixties
– The inside of oyster shells – the unique mother of pearl grey and white of each shell
– Ashes in the chimney early morning, before my grandfather would get the fire going
– The black and white of a board of the game of chess and checkers on the other side
– Crosswords – which my Pépé used to solve everyday as long as his mind allowed him to
– Laurel & Hardy, Zorro and Charlie Chaplin
– My teenage musical hero Jean-Jacques Goldman’s album: Entre Gris Clair et Gris Foncé.

What’s your favourite black & white & grey memory?

Here are a few of my paintings featuring black & white & grey