4-Thank you Andrée

Her name was Andrée. She was a wonderful Belgian lady flourishing on the wiser side of life. I had been searching for ages for that spark to reignite my smouldering artist’s block. Whilst living in Brussels from the age of twenty I frequented gallery openings and many many exhibitions in my hunger for connection. Through Andrée I got started painting in watercolours. She had a style that was loose and almost mystical. I was hooked. I timidly asked if she gave classes and she said no. My heart sunk. However, she said, you can come along next week to paint with my group and see how it works out. That went on for two years. There were often eight of us who met once a month to share lunch, chatting about life and hours of painting around her dining room table. It was a couple of years before I changed to acrylics. We had moved to live on a canal boat and I had the use of the wheelhouse of a huge neighbouring barge called Whio whose owners had gone back to New Zealand and trusted me with the key. And so my adventure started taking shape.