gaelle boissonnard | Michele Roohani

A night with George Steiner and Gaelle Boissonnard—now that’s a curious ménage! Late caffeine kept me up until 6:30 this morning and I spent the night with these two.

Steiner took me from an old Transfuge to wikiquotes and Cornel West; there goes 3 hours pf precious sleep and when my mind was too tired to absorb anything more, Boissonnard’s images were there to help with their delicate originality.

“There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.” Steiner

Boissonnard is everything our “noisy” culture isn’t—serene, quiet, tranquil…

She has started working with a new company; I hope this move makes her work more available to international markets. Just found out that my friends in Paris, La Banque de l’Image, mention her in their company’s blog!

I love this quote of Steiner: “the most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.” This is what I have learned by heart long ago:

“Le tout est de tout dire, et je manque de mots
Et je manque de temps, et je manque d’audace
Je rêve et je dévide au hasard mes images
J’ai mal vécu, et mal appris à parler clair.” Eluard

دلم گرفته است

به ايوان مي روم و انگشتانم را

بر پوست كشيده شب مي كشم

چراغهاي رابطه تاريكند

كسي مرا به آفتاب

معرفي نخواهد كرد

كسي مرا به ميهماني گنجشكها نخواهد برد

پرواز را به خاطر بسپار

پرنده مردني است

I feel sad,

I feel blue.

I go outside and rub my fingers

on the sleek shell of the night.

“I see that lights of contact are blocked,

All lights of contact are blocked.”

“Nobody will introduce me to the sun,

Nobody will take me to the gathering of doves.”

Keep the flight in mind,

The bird may die.

Forugh Farrokhzad

This post is in the loving memory of the 3 sisters my friend, Marie, has lost in the past few years (the last one two days ago)—all young, all from heart problems…

To see Boissonnard’s blog go here.

Just watched Charlie Brown agonizing over the girl with red hair in a peanuts valentine special – Snoopy of course gets all the girls as usual.

I would like to share the work of an artist that I admire greatly. Having been in the greeting card industry for years, I seldom get impressed by new art in this business. Gaelle Boissonnard is an artist living in the Loire Valley region of France. Her work is exquisite and I have been collecting it since that fateful day I fell in love with her images in a small shop in Mont St. Michel.

There is something otherworldly about her work – it’s fresh, whimsical, happy yet somehow profound (let’s not forget that these are commercial works being sold in small shops). They don’t scream at you, they share their beauty quietly.

I did get in touch with her and am still waiting for her distributors to start doing something in the U.S. It’s easy to find her in the card shops in France now but she’s difficult to catch in the internet.

Just found out that she has a book out too.

I wished somebody would start putting words/poetry to these gorgeous paintings of hers – something like Prévert‘s Immense et Rouge:

“Immense et rouge
Au-dessus du Grand Palais
Le soleil d’hiver apparaît
Et disparaît
Comme lui mon coeur va disparaître
Et tout mon sang va s’en aller
S’en aller à ta recherche
Mon amour
Ma beauté
Et te trouver
Là où tu es.”

or Tagore‘s great piece:

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.”

or better yet, Rumi who keeps bewitching people after 800 years…