The Last Painter of Happiness

"La vie ne m'a pas toujours sourit, mais j'ai toujours sourit à la vie."

-Raoul Dufy

I saw this beautiful and charming cartoon one day in university - I was escaping a very boring art history class, and I discovered that a class on the History of Animation was being held right next door. That's where I first saw 'The Invisible Moustache of Raoul Dufy' (from UPA studios):

Dufy was a perfect mix of craftsman and artist - he started out making paintings at the beginning of the 20th century but branched out into ceramics, textiles, set design, commercial illustration, interior decorating and printmaking. He's had a huge influence on me in more ways than one.

 I was lucky enough to see a small exhibit of his ceramics at a design museum while travelling in Belgium a few years ago:

L'artiste lui-même.

We don't call women 'stout' anymore, dear

I now have a Tumblr account which I am using to build a portfolio website (which is still under construction). You can view it over here.


Some images from the small yet incredibly amazing haul from my visit to a church basement bazaar this  morning in Petite-Patrie:

I now have more doily books than one person should own.

 I couldn't not buy a macramé instruction book with a title like this...

...and then I looked inside and saw these.

Some of the advertisements in these "ladies' craft journals" are downright odd.

  

          Yum yum, lard icing! Thanks Loretta!

This one was in the classifieds of a 1962 issue of 'Workbasket'. There was an episode of Wiretap about mail-order monkeys on CBC recently -  it seems they are not as sweet and docile as the one depicted in this advertisement. (Thank goodness the monkey comes with instructions.)

I also picked up an assortment of cassette tapes purely for their aesthetic flair and because cheeseball country music is awesome:

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