Chapter Four

My wife wanted to write my column this week. I wouldn’t let her.

She wanted to tell about our trip to Mousehole and how we were refused entrance by a restaurant which clearly advertised itself as being “Open,” and yet told us that it had closed for the season.  What can you expect from an establishment whose signs say that dogs are welcome, but children must be kept on leashes? Imagine! 

On the other hand, she thought she would spend a little time writing about the kindness of the people we have met here, who have brought us cooked meals to our home, who have cooked us meals in our home, and who have invited us for cooked meals in their homes. One such woman we met at the Cornwall Council offices (and I am glad we did; she is an excellent chef and bright light). She has since dropped in on us three times with mouth-watering dinners! We have yet to return the favor. A well-known painter and her charming husband whom I met at the St. Ives School of Painting Cabaret Night last month, invited us to their home for a wonderful, dreamy, unforgettable afternoon feast with their friends and family. And, would you believe, we were invited to the very American holiday of Thanksgiving Dinner by complete strangers who had read this column two weeks ago?

I’m sure she would have written a very nice column, possibly the most amusing one yet, but this is not why I refused her. I refused her because artists are territorial, like dogs. It’s my column. Mine. I’ll bite anyone who touches it. No, what I am going to write about this week is…heck! Somehow my wife always gets her way.

To be continued.

Chapter Three

If you want to have a really good laugh sometime, I mean a fabulous wet-your pants-good-laugh, then put an American friend behind the wheel of your car and watch his facial expressions as he drives from Lands End to Penzance.

Remember, Americans drive huge cars. The thought of yielding, or having to back up, to let another car pass is not something an American driver has ever had to do in his or her life. We Americans simply don’t acknowledge that anything exists on the roads other than ourselves, especially other drivers. Now you begin to see the possibilities for a grand time.

For the American driver in Cornwall, navigating the serpentine labyrinth through the hedgerows of the western farmlands is like being in a video game. You can’t see anything. There is no telling what might pop out from behind the next curve: car, tractor, cow, clueless hikers, double decker bus, tank.  The hilarity will climax when your friend drives from the top of the hill at the Newlyn School of Art down the mere trickle of a road to the crossroads below. If your friend has not had a heart attack or knocked the mirrors off a passing car by the time you reach the bottom, then you have won the game. Or lost… I’m not sure which.

Of course, if one’s eyes are constantly straying from the road to the beautiful landscape and skies which one is desperate to paint, then that makes the driving all the more harrowing. My wife is a non-stop dispenser of complaints when she is in the passenger seat. And even though I drove our children without incident to Chapel Carn Brea one Saturday to see the ponies and climb the hill (which was truly magical) she still threatens to hide the car keys.

To be continued.

copyright 2012 Cameron Bennett

My Old Life in the New World

Before I was born anew, thrown up on these English shores by the hands of fate (my wife), I had a relatively busy artistic life in the USA, painting, illustrating, and teaching.  This is not to say that my life in Cornwall is not rich, because it is, just in different ways.  Hopefully it will become richer still.

The point of this entry is merely to give a better representation of the drawing and painting that I do, or did, when living in the USA.  My goal, and one of the purposes of this blog, is to chronicle my success, or lack of it, in securing more of this kind of work in England.

Click here to visit my portrait blog.