Beaux arts in Dijon - great museum

medieval art

Dear all, if you ever travel across France, please visit Dijon. I booked a hotel there only to take a pause in the 14-hour drive from southern France back to Amsterdam - but it was one of the best experiences in my holidays. The museum of fine arts was right across the hotel, free of charge, and clearly arranged by people who know what painting is about.

There was some very nice medieval art, of which a special feature struck me: the humanliveliness and story-telling qualities of the works. It made me feel like: the people of this time live like shadows, compared to the full soul-life of the medieval inhabitants of Dijon. (OK, maybe it says something about me as well, after all I was on holidays).

Niche with Egyptian eyes

But the best part for me was the attic with modern paintings. There were a lot of "lesser" works from great masters, but the choice of works seemed to tell a story about the development of painting, as seen from within, from a painter's point of view. Unexpected things were to be seen, like a scene from an egyptian tomb, bare underpaintings and other deviant works of the great masters, but also a very nice Redon. It was really inspiring, never I was in a place where I felt painting is actually understood. For art students this museum really is a treasure-cabin. I really felt like I was understood and inspired, the museum felt like a place to dwell for the creative spirit.
About the egyptian scene up here - no artist was mentioned. It was a hole in the wall, with the sculptures of a polar bear and two snails, and two Egyptian eyes on sticks. I'm not good at french but the text was like: "lifelike reconstruction of scene from egyptian tomb".  Very puzzling, because it looked like a great surrealist artwork, and it was situated between other early 20th century work.

There were other museums as well, of the sculptor Francois Rude (french pronunciation...), a famous artist in the more classical style, early 19th century. Some work of his is in the fine art museum as well.

Dijon has a special atmosphere. In the middle ages, it was the capitol of the huge Burgundy empire (now I understand the color name burgundy). In my language, the term "burgundic" is also used for the best and super-rich meals.  The town center consists of a few dozen streets that are all equally beautiful. The houses are very rich and beautiful in their design, the town looks very much like this typical medieval fairy tale film decor - but it's real. This look must  have inspired the shop-owners, because there's a special kind  of design to be found in Dijon: the friendly kind of alternative fairy-tale and fantasy stuff that really warms the soul. But also the regular classy shops (like Pimkie, Kenzo and other designer stuff) were very nice. And in between there were shops with seemingly equally good designs, only with prices much lower. The shop on this picture was about cats and the fairy-tale design I mentioned, clothing of brands like Bohemian, and some nice sculpture as well.

We didn't have time for the rest of Dijons culture, that was a pity. I did look through the flyers for film, theater and opera - very promising. There was a lot being programmed - theatre, opera and art-house movies that draw a smaller but more refined public. It seems as if Dijon is the hidden cultural capitol of northern France. Paris is nice, but too big for the artistic soul life. Art and Cultural creatives who are just a bit too gentle to survive in a big city, seem to find a good place to dwell in Dijon. 

Alchemist Vessel

About the title: the alchemist vessel, that's just me. I'm into esoterics and inner development, read a lot on the subject, but making art is still my favorite way to work with these things. To me, art is a form of alchemy.

Funny enough, I found that working with inner development was not at all fashionable in art school (in the late 80's). Times did change since then, but I do understand why it was so. Art was just coming loose from tradition, to make way for individual development. When you go a path like that, it's necessary to start as a non-believer. One has to work with one's own raw material. When accepting ideas about higher worlds or inner development, that raw material starts to hurt and one might be less creative for a while (it happened to me too). 

There was also Darwinist ideology that had a big influence in the art world. Abstract expressionism - the painter as the sublime genious animal. Objectivity being only possible as a passive material given ('only matter is real'). Stuff like that.  People who were naieve enough to paint elfs in art school were evicted from school for that, without proper explanation of reason. Formally, there were no rules and all was allowed, but as soon as spirituality became a topic, all doors would shut in your face. Thank goodness somehow this power is broken. 

Still there was a good thing about this attitude, for me it was a necessary phase. How else would one become ready to really create one's own moral codes? Only when there's no moral code anymore, you have to make your own. Artists who create their own moral code from scratch, almost always make good work, or at least work that is of real use to other human beings (and artists). There are a lot of artists that I don't particularly like, but that are valuable to me because they're consequent and show exactly where their ideas lead them. This is a contribution to artistic alchemy as well, even though transformation is not always succesful. 


I've seen so many connections between art and alchemy, that I don't know where to start. As inside, as outside: a painting really is a mirror of the body and soul (check here for more on that). Form, color and gesture really are a language one can speak in, and relate very directly about what's going on inside. Color to me is a carrier of consciousness, moving between warmth and light (here more on color).
As above, as below: when a person really shows things as honest and precise as possible, while making an artwork, it's bound to touch and resonate with universal truth. 


Before, the alchemist vessel was a bronze cauldron, where the process took place in matter. Alchemy used to be about transforming material substances (and trying to evolve with that, while conducting the process). But since a few decades, inner alchemy can be based on working with warmth as well. We are the cauldron, and our lower nature is being processed.
Creativity, along with social behaviour, is the key to all inner development. I didn't know at first that one can be creative in all professional fields, so I chose to become an artist.  But alchemy is in all these places where people are creative - science, raising kids or trying to channge society for the better. It's also in tv-shows where people try to improve themselves (psychologically etc). 
To work alone in a studio, making art, may be one of the least suitable ways to actually do that. By the time I found out about that, it was too late. And that suits me, because I love what I do. But that's another story. 

Family project - 1

This is the underpainting for a mural in the new bakery, in the company of my family.

My parents own a Dutch windmill, which is still operating thanks to the tenacity of my grandfather. It survived industrialisation, poverty, bad luck (accidents happening to its owners) and fire.  It lies next to the border with Germany (with whom we were at war a few decades ago). But the countryside is truely lovely, and the mill finally is starting to flourish, thanks to renewed eco-consciousness, and the take-over of my youngest brother.

Recently a new bakery was built in the mill, where the mill's flour is turned into bread. I was invited, to make a mural in the bakery. I wanted it to become extra really good, and I've been breeding on it for weeks, trying to figure out something good.

here's their website

Reconciliation with my background has been an ongoing process over the years. As a teenager I was a weird little punkrock girl who wanted to go to artschool (in a region where there was no music or art present at all). My grandfather, the miller, firmly believed in me, even when I looked outrageous. The rest of my relatives had serious doubts. But I went, thanks to the government system of scholarship, and I've been doing art ever since (with variable succes levels and in between having kids, but I kept on it - I'm still here). About my family: they never stopped supporting me, even though they didn't have a clue to what I want from life. I don't mind - they care about me, and if I ever would get to kill somebody, they'd hide me.
Family stuff is a bit like fertilizer - sometimes it smells bad (after all it's dung), but it sure helps things grow.

One huge painting of me is in my parent's house already. Now I'll be doing the bakery. I'm halfway the project, and it's turning out well so far. The mill has always been the eye-apple of my grandfather. Even at his very old age, when he didn't reconize his relatives' faces anymore, his consciousness would clear up when you'd tell him about the mill. That he'd know and remember.

I'm sure the bakery would fulfill his big dream. I guess that's why this project is so important to me. I've been wrestling with the design for weeks, and I think I'll take a major step in my artistic development by making this mural. Who would have thought that fifteen years ago...