Pour quoi la France?

Moving is always a big decision. Moving to another country is bigger. Moving a family to another country is huge. The process took years. There were positive and negative factors contributing to our decision.  The positive factors were really stronger, even though some of them were somewhat conjectural for us. Our only previous experience had been as visitors. My wife had been to Narbonne as a grad student, studying the cathedral there during a summer. I had been to Paris a few times, and I had also spent some time in Provence. For me as an artist, I was in search of a combination of things: a varied and picturesque landscape, an old culture containing various deep mythologies, and a society that thought more of artists as serious people. For us as a family, it soon became clear that France held out, simply, the possibility of  a better life. 

The landscape has always been part of my concerns as an artist, although generally it served as a vehicle to impart something universal and not local. I found myself using images from books as points of departure, making paintings such as the one on this page, Net, depicting the Lakes of Killarney, but containing ideas from Irish literature and Buddhism. Living in the middle of Houston while mentally living on the other side of the world created a vague sense of longing that took years to act upon. I now live in a landscape that is beautiful, full of history, and charged with mythology that dates to the Bronze Age. The River Seine, which flows no bigger than a trout stream through Mussy, is named after the Celtic goddess Sequanna. 

Another Country

We left Texas for France in October, 2005.  My wife first thought of the idea of moving here around 2002, sending me some images from a French real estate website while I was at my computer. We were both surprised to learn how inexpensive houses were in some parts of this country. If one mentions France, I suppose most Americans think of Paris, and we all know Paris is expensive. Houses in the countryside, however, are not necessarily expensive at all. Of course, some regions are more desirable than others, generally because of the weather and, in the south, proximity to the ocean. The French economy, although still highly agricultural, is now driven by activity in the cities. Many family properties in the countryside have been sold by heirs eager to move to the cities, and the buyers of these rural properties have often been foreigners, mostly English. We are not typical at all, but we were able to accomplish our move with judicious use of the Internet. 

We live in a village called Mussy-sur-Seine. It is in southern Champagne and is 200 kilometers from Paris. We found our house on a website and contacted the agent by phone once we arrived, staying for a few weeks with some very generous friends who made it possible for us to find our bearings in a new country. We have four boys who were ages 10, 7, 5, and 3 when we got here. None spoke a word of French. My wife and I were quite concerned that the boys would have trouble learning the language, and some of our friends back in Houston even thought we were being cruel by placing our kids directly into the public school system here without adequate linguistic preparation. Bilingual education exists in Paris and other large cities, but only in private schools. All our kids are in public schools, studying the national curriculum, and are doing fine. Children are capable of so much if they are given guidance and encouragement, and our boys, although daunted a bit at first, have adapted beautifully.