Fire-up your imagination (the video)

If you do not see the embedded video, you can watch it on YouTube.
Last July, I published a post Creative exercise: Inspired by nature’s marks and I wanted to make a short video of the process, but did not get around to do it… until now.

The Champs-Élysées

The Champs-Élysées is probably the most famous avenue in Paris (France). At the top, you can admire the Arc de Triomphe. In the opposite direction, you can see the Place de la Concorde with the Obelisk of Luxor and the big fairground wheel in the background.

The Arc de Triomphe from the top of the Champs-Élysées

The Arc de Triomphe from the other side (Avenue de la Grande Armée)

Christmas illuminations on the Champs-Élysées avenue

Illuminated fountains - Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées

The avenue is also home to upscale shops, cars manufacturer showrooms, famous restaurants (the Fouquet’s) and luxury brands.

Christmas decorations on the Cartier shop

At Christmas, the avenue is illuminated and very crowded. They also organise a lovely Christmas market in the lower part of the avenue.

The Champs-Élysées in paintings

I was surprised that I could not find that many paintings of the Champs-Elysees. Here are two:

La Modiste Sur Les Champs Elysees by Jean Béraud [Source : Wikimedia]

The Champs Elysees During The Paris Fair Of 1867 [Source: Wikigallery]

I wish everyone a happy Christmas and end-of-year celebrations.

Public art in Swindon

The Central Library in Swindon recently posted on Flickr a collection of photographs of past and present public art in Swindon.

Unfortunately, many of Ken White’s murals  have now disappeared, but Ken is still making great art  inspired by his time in the Swindon railway factory, where he was handpainting signs.

Below are pictures of some of the sculptures dotted around town.

Bronze sculpture of a ram in Swindon Old Town

 

 

Queen's Park, Swindon

'Gorilla' by Tom Gleeson, Queens Park, Swindon.

Diana Dors (who was born in Swindon)- Shaw Ridge Leisure Park, Swindon

Making a Christmas gift and madeleines recipe

Creativity is about doing and making. It does stop when you leave your studio. So why not infuse some creativity into your Christmas presents?

It’s not just about saving money, but more about spending the time to create something unique that you won’t find in high street shops. And time is a currency in short supply these days, so you are making a real present to whoever receives it.

The little black box

I wanted my gift to look good and professional. I had a tall square black cardboard box that gave me a good start. I cut the sides to 6 cm high.

I kept the extra bits of carboard and folded them to make two dividers inside the box.

I composed the image I glued on the top of the box with Adobe Photoshop Elements 11. The photo of the notebook cover is one of an actual notebook Proust wrote in.

For the side of the box, I created a label with all the ingredients.

To increase the “professional” effect, I cut some transluscent baking paper that looks just like the crystal paper you find in luxury biscuit tins. I rounded the corner for a smoother look. Et voila!

Madeleine recipe

I found this excellent recipe on the French blog: « Aux Portes du Paradis » blog. It is a recipe from the French chef Gaston Lenôtre.

Below is an English translation of the recipe, in case your French is a little bit rusty.



Ingredients for around 20 madeleines:

• 3 eggs
• 130 g of sugar
• 20 g of honey
• 150 g of flour
• 125 g of butter
• 1 pinch of salt
• 5 g of baking powder
• Zest from 1/2 lemon or orange – or vanilla

Preparation


1 - Soften the butter in the microwave. Beat the eggs with the sugar, the pinch of salt and honey until the mixture is pale and has doubled in volume.


2 - Add to the mixture the flour mixed with the baking powder. Finish by adding the softened butter and the lemon zest (or orange zest or vanilla). Put the dough in the refrigerator at least 2 hours or overnight (best).

Note: It is the thermal shock (temperature difference) that will allow you to get a nice bump on top of the madeleine, so you absolutely need to let the dough rest in the refrigerator.

3 - Preheat your oven at 230 ° C. Grease and flour the mould for madeleines (even if the silicone one). Fill the cavities of the mould for madeleines with a tablespoon of dough, without spreading it.

A metal mould for small madeleines and a silicon mould for normal size ones

4 - Put in the oven and immediately lower the temperature to 200 ° C.


After 3 to 5 minutes, the centre of the madeleine forms a small depression: further turn down the oven thermostat to about 180 ° C and leave the madeleines to cook. Instead of depression, the famous "bump" will form on top of the madeleines.

When the madeleines are golden (4-5 more minutes), remove from the oven and immediately unmold onto a rack to let them cool.

18 madeleines in the box

Related resources

Book with Gaston Lenôtre's desserts recipes on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (affiliate lins)

Painting childhoood memories – Proust’s madeleines

Do you remember how, as children, a teacher would ask us to draw a scene from our last holidays? But then, we grew-up and we stopped drawing our memories. Why?

Smell and taste are fairly untapped senses compared to sight, touch or hearing. Yet, creativity can feed on all senses.

Creative exercise

Find an object with a particular smell (perfume, bottle of ink, dish, fabric, etc.) and paint what the smell evokes for you.

Proust’s madeleines

The French writer Marcel Proust is well-known in France for its evocation of a particular childhood memory in his novel “Swann’s Way”:

“And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. […]

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (Translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff) - New York Henry Holt and Company 1922 - Project Gutenberg EBook-No.7178

In my next post, I will give you the recipe to bake some madeleines… This way you will be able to enrich your own sensory memories






Related resources

The Proust Questionnaire