"Lots of things women can't be....

'Sauvage' is one of them."  The painter Joan Mitchell (from an interview in the film by Marion Cajori)

But first coffee, then discussions about artists, women and not.... this coffee may be art, actually, especially when it is served in one of these Illy cups (all these photos are my own):

Thus fortified, we went in search of autumn colors in the vineyards. We began here:

And then we tried a different angle, and the same sky only differently blue:

And then we found clusters of grapes:

We then decided to head home, and work on art.... because we wish to be ever so "sauvage,"  like Joan Mitchell. I think that my lovely Van Gogh woman is too much his; I am not an appropriation artist, and so ... she must be visited by other beings, naked bodies more in my own mode. So here she was:

She is lovely. But she is still Van Gogh's. So, I am working, slowly, on adding visitors, anonymous women, who will inter-fold with Madame just like the yellow and orange and red leaves fold in among themselves in the autumn vineyard. Here we are so far:

Sometimes we are lucky in our choice of walks .... Picasso said "The painter goes through states of fullness and evacuation. That is the whole secret of art. I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainebleau. I get 'green' indigestion. I must get rid of the sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions" (p. 10, Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, edited by Dore Ashton, Da Capo Press, 1988).  And here, it is soft pinks, oranges, yellows... perhaps I will add reds tomorrow? I don't yet know. But I will try to remain sufficiently ... 'sauvage.'