The colours of my life – Part 7/7 – PURPLE

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.

OK, so let’s start with an awkward teenager moment, wearing a beautiful purple dress in the 1980s for Christmas. My Maman looks gorgeous and I don’t feel at ease in this evening gown, but I just loved that dress!

What else does the colour purple remind me of?

Mostly, the colour purple invokes for me delicious fruit:
– wild blueberries from the Massif Central, still warm from the sun or hiding away in creamy yoghurt
– Still warm, fresh blueberry muffins, tried for the first time on my first trip to Scotland as a teenager
– Black cherries and the very dark purple stains they left on my fingers after picking the big ripe most delicious fruit perched on a ladder by the cherry tree in my Pepe‘s orchard, almost every year in June, before the blackbirds ate them all
– Picking blackberries on a summer walk, staying stuck to the thorns of the bramble bushes which were not ready to let them go, devising ways to pick up the highest, biggest ones bursting with sunshine alongside the meadows or little tracks in the woods for a delicious treat with a bit of sugar and whipped cream
– Smelling the sweet smell of the blackberry jam that my mum would make if we brought enough blackberries from our quest
– Dark grapes hanging from the vine in September along the South-facing wall of my Pepe‘s house
– Plums, also from the orchard or from a neighbour, magically turned into my mum’s famous „tartes aux prunes“, the sticky warm juice running along my fingers after biting into a big chunk of it
– “Pruneaux“, the most tasty prunes from South Western France known as „le pruneau d‘Agen“, kept in a ceramic jar on my Pépé‘s coffee table, a treat with a stone in the middle that I kept twirling in my mouth until there was no more fruit flesh on it
– Crème de cassis (blackcurrant liquor) to add flavour to Champagne for a beautifully sounding and bubbling Kir Royal or drunk with Crémant d’Alsace, a sparkling white wine at weddings and other family celebrations

There are also all these purple flowers:

Forget-me-nots, irises, pansies, tiny water lilies, rhododendrons, heather in the hills of Scotland, lilac in full bloom smelling so intensely in the garden, and all these beautiful flowers of which I don’t know the name in my Maman’s garden.

Miscellaneous purples:

– Top of the list: my purple ski overall as a sweet 16! The bat wings were the rage back in those days 🙂

– Ink stains on old school notebooks
– My grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ beautiful handwriting on a collection of postcards from a long time ago
– The little purple dot on my Pépé’s jackets, representing the „Palmes Académiques“, a medal of honour in the French school teaching system, in recognition of his contributions teaching to school children during a long career in Normandy
– The purple lining of my fake-fur coat handsawn by my mum which she made for Christmas 1979 – this was probably my most favorite coat in the world as the picture shows!

– The purple hair of the first punks I ever saw in my home town of La Rochelle in France
– Bruises on my legs, forgetting where they came from in the first place
– and of course “Purple rain”, the unforgettable song by Prince!

What are your memories of purple? Let me know in your comments below.

Inspired by purple

And here are a few paintings of mine where you’ll find some gorgeous shades of purple. Hope you like them!