The colours of my life – Part 1/7 – YELLOW

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. For other posts from that series, please go to this page.

YELLOW like…

… the flowers of my childhood:

The heart of little daisies, with which I made countless flower chains and little bouquets; buttercups which made my chin shine yellow when I put a flower just underneath it; dandelions and their milky, sticky stem after plucking a flower; honeysuckle which smelled so sweet in the garden of my grandfather Pépé.

… some of the favorite foods of my childhood:

Emmental, gruyère and butter to spread on a fresh baguette or to let melt on tiny “coquillette” noodles; the yellow of the branded tins of sardines which I used to love eating (also with baguette!) and the transparent yellow of the oil in which the sardines were kept; golden yellow like the perfect thin French fries that my grandfather Pépé used to cook for me as a treat when I was staying with him; the pale yellow of the delicious creamy potato purée that he would make with fresh potatoes and in which he would stir a pot of crème fraîche… sooo yummy! Or the vivid yellow of a flan pâtissier, a treat to get at the baker’s after school; the whitish yellow of vanilla ice cream in any form and shape; the creamy rich yellow of the honey from the huge honey pot kept in my Pépé’s fridge – my favorite treat to lick off a teaspoon after dinner like a lollypop; yellow like a tin cake, like madeleines or freshly made crêpes; and the fruity yellow of pineapple, banana, a Williams pear or a home made apple tarte. Haaaa!

… French café memories:

Zingy yellow of a “citron pressé” drunk cold with lots of ice and sugar; or a slice of lemon rescued at the bottom of a glass of Perrier water at the café on the square, in the shade … or even better for a little girl: the sparkly sweet yellow color of a bottle of Orangina, another treat for a warm summer afternoon with a matching straw!

… school memories:

the standard biro pens from Bic with their yellow almost orange body and red, blue, green or black caps – my first basic supplies for writing in primary school; yellow crayons and the standard colour that little kids use to symbolise the sun… and the neon yellow of highlighters to emphasise key facts from my school days.

…sailing memories:

the vivid yellow hull of my parents’ 18ft sailing boat (a Jouet 18) that they bought when I was 3 years old, named Almachris after their children’s names: Alain, Mathilde and Jean-Christophe – beloved boat on which we spent carefree holidays sailing around the islands of Ré, Aix and Oléron and in the bay of La Rochelle; the yellow fishermen-type jackets, hats and wellies which I used to wear when learning to sail on an Optimist or which I sometimes wore on my way to school when the weather was bad in La Rochelle.

… more countryside and summer yellows:

the gorgeous rapeseed fields and their flowers undulating in the wind all along the road in the French countryside in May; the big fat sunflowers, the wheat fields freshly cut or the corn fields all around my Pépé’s house in the summer; the wheat or corn grains that I used to feed the chickens with in the morning; the fluffy yellow of a little chick which was given to me by the market man at the weekly market in the nearby twon and which I brought back in a shoe carton, very proudly to my Pépé’s house and which I fed myself for a couple of days before returning home; the yellow of the Tour de France’s top man and woman’s shirts, another classic of my summer holidays, live and on the small screen too.

… other great yellows of my childhood:

Tweetie Pie, Mr Happy, Little Miss Sunshine, the French Post Office letterboxes, the postman’s car in the French countryside, the lemon yellow Citroen CX of my Pépé and the box of Cachous Lajaunie (french licorice) that my dad used to keep in the top drawer of his personal cabinet.

So many happy yellow memories! What are yours?

And here’s a selection of my paintings featuring yellow