Francesca Filanc

Tag: Children

SUMMER DAYS –PAINTING AND PLAYING INDIANS

The Author & Artist in her first Studio

My mother, Pat Welsh, realized I had an aptitude for art at a very young age. Gallery of my current work. In the summertime she taught painting to some of my friends, my sister and me. Mother would encourage me to paint on warm summer afternoons when we were tired of playing imagination games or had had enough beach time for that particular day. I recall so vividly painting in the afternoon after lunch as I matured into adolescence.

To this day I actually remember the upwelling of joy I felt when painting some particular paintings at ages six to eleven years old. My Mom thought them special herself and saved these paintings, having them framed for my oldest daughter Yvette when she born.

Long before I vacationed with my husband and children on the Snake River in Wyoming I recollect painting a scene depicting two Indian men with their canoe. One Indian was leaning into the canoe, the other Indian to the side with a thick forest in the background. I took hours to paint this painting in watercolors. I really felt the Indians getting ready to take the canoe out onto the water. Possibly the games I had played as a very young girl influenced my deep emotion in painting this scene. I loved playing imagination games and I believe my mother encouraged us to play outdoors.

Indians was one of my favorite games. I was a squaw princess and my name was Falling Waters. I have no idea where I got that idea! But I loved the name and no other child could borrow the name, Not Even for one day of play. A little bossy I would say! In those days we had a huge area of Eucalyptus and Monterey Cypress trees growing out of sandy soil. It was a great place to play Indians! We also had an area on our property that had solid clay, which enabled us to have fun making clay pots and cups like the Indians did back in the day!

Playing Indians

We were a neighborhood of girls and we all played together. There were at least seven or eight, Barbie, Katherine, Patty, Annette, Mija, Tina, my sister Wendy and me. There were actually more girls, but they were older than we. They played with us in a more in charge role like being mothers’ helpers. We adored these older girls, Joan, Trudy, and Chris.

On some occasions I remember playing at a friend’s house observing wide-eyed while the older sister got ready for a date, dreaming about the day that I would go to a dance all dressed up in a beautiful shiny dress having been given a corsage by a boy!

Painting is something I have enjoyed doing my whole life thanks to my mother’s encouragement to paint! As an abstract artist I paint my thoughts and feelings.

Here’s to lazy Summers Swimming Painting Gardening sipping Ice tea in beautiful environments!

Happy Summer!

Bye for Now,

Francesca

July 10, 2012
SUMMER DAYS – FOURTH OF JULY, DEL MAR

OUT OF THIS WORLD

The 4^th of July is just around the corner and I am reminded of summer days growing up in a sleepy little beach town in southern California, Del Mar. Not so sleepy now, but back then it actually was, despite the fact that it was a Mecca for the movie stars.

Stay tuned for more in my Blog on Movie Stars and Del Mar California once the racing season begins in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, here is a true story about lazy Summer Days Growing up in Del Mar.

My parents had a 4^th of July party every year. My father was a lawyer in Los Angeles. Daddy commuted by train, leaving from the train station on Monday morning and arriving home on Friday night. Orange County was considerably far away to drive in those days. Back in the day, home fireworks were legal. They were illegal to buy in San Diego and maybe in Los Angeles too, but in Orange county fireworks were sold. I remember vividly Daddy driving to Orange County a week or two before the fourth of July to buy fireworks for our party. The excitement my sister Wendy and I felt was palpable! With anticipated glee Wendy and I counted the days till we would be able to light our fireworks!

It was like Christmas in July when he would come home with all the beautifully wrapped fireworks! Packages labeled with the names: Sparklers, Sky Rockets, Black Snakes, Fountains, Roman Candles. Wendy and I adored the sparklers! It was like shooting stars on a stick. In the night air you could write with them and they twinkled like little stars or fireflies. Being California girls born and raised we did not have fireflies. We did experience them when we traveled to see our grandparents in Pennsylvania.

The morning of the fourth would always start with a swim in the ocean. Oh, how good the water felt! After breakfast Wendy and I and the other girls in the neighborhood would have a parade. I think it must have been one of my mother’s ideas. We dressed up like revolutionary war characters and would march up and down the streets once I started playing the flute. I played I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy and other patriotic songs. Wendy brought up the rear playing the drums.

FIREFLY

The evening festivities started about 5:00 or 6:00. So exciting! Wendy and I got to have our Black Snakes on the driveway! For those of you who are not familiar with these fireworks, after lighting a small tablet, the tablet starts smoking and an ash resembling a snake is created via an intumescent reaction. Then it was all we could do to wait for darkness to fall and light our sparklers.

As much as I loved the 4^th of July there was only one part that I dreaded, making it a some what bittersweet experience. Being hugged tightly by the grown-ups! By the 4^th, I had had three weeks of ocean and sun. Back in the 1950’s and 60’s they did not have sunscreen except for the hideous white paste, Mercurochrome. So by the 4^th of July my back was red as a lobster! My front side would be all freckled and brown but my back would be on fire with sunburn. I would try to tell people please don’t hug me because I am sunburned but everyone was drinking and smoking and my little voice did not get heard. So I would wince when the company arrived and wince when they left! Otherwise, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato chips, watermelon —Yummy. J

Once it was dark the real fun began! Daddy would give us our long anticipated sparklers. After that Daddy would start with the big fireworks.

OOOH AHHHH We would sigh — SOOOO Beautiful!!!!

After we finished our family fireworks show, the whole family walked up the street to the top of the hill to watch the spectacular fireworks from the nearby fairgrounds. It was really dark back then so you saw lots of stars. We had lots of bats in Del Mar and on one occasion a bat flew into my hair and I screamed! We sat up on the vacant lot and waited till 9:00 pm when the fireworks started, oohing and ahing at the colors, all the colors of the rainbow brilliantly lighting up against the inky black background.

Artists’ works are influenced by events and emotions of their lives. Perhaps my subconscious mind took the colors and hues of those remembered fireworks into the artwork that I am producing today.

Happy painting and dreaming… Fireworks in the sky!

“Saturday, in the park, think it was the fourth of July.” Chicago

Chicago Performing Saturday in The Park

RED PLANET

I hope you all have a Safe Happy Fourth of July!

Bye for Now,

Francesca

July 3, 2012
A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE

Last weekend I was invited to a friend’s 65^th wedding anniversary party. It was also the friend’s 90^th birthday. This particular friend looks 20 years younger and acts it also! I overheard her say the other day to her 27-year-old granddaughter, I love your tattoos. They are so beautiful. If I were a young woman today I would have many of my own! My grandmother Frances used to say, “Age is a condition, youth is a state of mind.” Frances was also of the young club! All my friends loved being in my grandmother Mimi’s presence.

Honey, there’s nothing new under the sun. Your generation does not shock me. We were doing all these things back in the roaring 20’s.

After the party I drove my car to the end of the road and lo and behold it was where we all used to go to watch the fire works when we were in high school. A flood of memories rushed into my head. Young love, giddy flirting, bodies close together, dances, trips to the mountains with my friends. Fun memories. I took another road and there I was at Feather Acres Farm and Nursery. My mother use to buy plants from the man and woman who owned it when I was a little girl.

The lady who has owned it for many years teaches riding and gives pony rides to youngsters on the weekends. What a beautiful piece of land overlooking the Del Mar Racetrack and the ocean beyond — a little piece of heaven, I thought. I will bring my grand-kids for pony rides and riding lessons.

I walked into the tidy greenhouse and bought a hydrangea and some lovely cut flowers. I also bought a couple of new ornamental bunnies for the garden.

It’s been a great day down memory lane. :)

Bye for now,

Rippin’ Lips

Francesca

May 9, 2012
THE WISTERIA

I have created a children’s garden on my property. Like anything artistic, when I create a new area in the garden it takes on a life of it’s own. It is fun planning things in one’s mind and then doing the work, or in my view the play.

Bryon in the children’s garden

The whole idea started because of a remark my son-in-law, Iban made one time when my daughter, Yvette and their daughter, Anushka were visiting.

Mama, you should put in a swing set for Anushka.

When they went home to Spain, I thought about what Iban had said.

What a great idea!

After researching, I walked around the property to pick out just the right area for the swing set. I looked online and found a very reasonable one with a playhouse, slide, swings and teeter-totter. Wow how great! Meanwhile the area I picked out had a diseased little tree that my gardener, Sergio, cut down for me. I asked him to leave the stump. It will make a perfect base for a little table. I then had 4 stools built around the table, just the right height for small children. The creative ideas continued to flow. Excitedly I mentioned to a friend,

“An arbor would be great! It would shade the children from the sun, and I could grow wisteria on it so it would smell good while the children played happily underneath,making their mud pies and other imaginative games.”

I wanted the Cooke’s Special purple variety. They are Chinese and bloom first, then leaf out after the flowers fall off the vine. The Japanese variety bloom and leaf out at the same time. I ordered them bare root from a local nursery but when they arrived one was Japanese and one was Chinese. My mother is a garden expert and television personality. She has written seven books, her most well known being the “bible” to gardening in southern California: Pat Welsh’s Southern California Gardening: A Month-By-Month Guide. Click here to visit her website!

Fran that will never do! You need to have two Wisteria of the same variety or they will look mismatched.

So I bought two more and put the Japanese ones on the fence and the Chinese Cooke’s Special purple on the arbor for the children’s garden. . . So I thought. When they started blooming last year lo and behold they were miss marked! The Japanese ones are on the arbor in the children’s garden and the Chinese ones are on my property fence. I was disappointed, but my mother, who has an amazing wisteria story in her book All My Eden’s, and has always loved the Chinese variety now loves the Japanese!

They are very vigorous growers, Pat reports.

I did have very good luck with them at other homes. One southwest home my husband and I built had Japanese Wisteria in a Spanish front patio. They were breathtaking in Spring. The smell is delicious too.

Rippin’ Lips

Bye for now,

Francesca

March 16, 2012