'La Maison Rose' - Anne Walmsley

La Maison Rose came about from a recent experience living in Foix, an old historic country town situated in the beautiful foothills of the Pyrenees in France. Our five hundred year old, typically narrow terrace house overlooked our little narrow street which would come alive in the summer evenings with restaurants spilling out onto the pavement and music and loud chatter going on well into the night. In the mornings we awoke to the smell of freshly baked bread and the chimes of the 7am bell resonating down from one of the castles’ towers above.

I observed my new local from a felt difference (of culture, language, history) that gradually became familiar and also an atypical physical distance. The paintings are cropped images of interiors or street views of my newly familiar everyday domestic territory. They are fleeting glimpses over where I walked, slept, cooked or sat within each of the five levels of our pink house. Height became a novel aspect to my everyday living ---up and down stairs, immersed in old architecture under the ancient castle and in such sublime mountainous landscape.