Art
W
hile traveling in
Burgundy, France late
last summer, I spent a
few days at le Chateau
de Mailly. My tour guide
was Chef Katherine Frelon and she
was on assignment, cooking for an
English group of wine enthusiasts
who had come down for their annual
wine excursion. They were guests at
the chateau and Katherine was hired
to cater over the long-weekend. The
chateau is set up on cliff’s edge,
overlooking the Yonne River and the
Canal Nivernais. The view is breathtaking. The entire setting is serene
and has just what you want in an old
French chateau, brick walls, farm
tables and countryside knick knacks.
My time was spent in the kitchen and
I had a front row seat to the magic of
Katherine’s cooking. As I sat back, I
imagined I was watching a play, as
characters exited and entered the
kitchen as if they were coming in and
out of the one-room set. With only a
handful of players and Katherine
taking the lead, it was clear this was
not their first performance.
Everything was running smoothly and
I was able to jump in and help out
from time to time. What a thrill!
We all had a moment to enjoy our own
dinner after guests had moved on to
their cheese course. I had the
pleasure of getting to know the
ladies who were helping her tend to
guests. One woman on the crew was
Avril Rose and is a dear friend of
Katherine’s. They had worked
together years before on canal
barges and during our break, her
husband Stan joined us. As it turns
out, they are two fellow British
transplants who have found a home in
France. After several glasses of wine
and a scrumptious plate of Beef
Bourguignon, the conversation took a
turn from the day’s events and I
discovered I was sitting next to a
world-renowned artist. Stanley Rose
is the leading artist of automotive
art and I was honored to be sharing a
lovely meal and much wine with both
him and his wife.
As it turns out, he had been working
on a book of a collection of his
artwork and that is how the
conversation unfolded. We pulled out
the iPad and he took me to his
website to show me his work. I was
blown away. You do not have to love
cars to enjoy his pieces. There is
something that is classic in his style
and his attention to detail jumps off
the canvas. He is a true working
artist and spends his days painting in
his studio in France, not too far from
le Chateau de Mailly.
As a follow-up to my visit, I spent
more time getting to know Stanley
Rose the artist. Stan was born in the
UK and obtained his B.A. Hons in Fine
Art and then taught fine art and
design for 13 years. Next he moved to
France to set up his own studio and
paint full time. He’s a member of the
Automotive Fine Art Society (based
in the U.S.) and is the current
President of Artist-Auto, a Frenchbased association of artists.
His preferred mediu m is acrylics and
oils and when I asked why he enjoys
these types of paints, he said, “I use
acrylic paint as under-painting and
finish with oils. Each medium has its
unique qualities and that is what I try
and exploit. Acrylic is quick drying
and transparent. I use it to quickly
develop the painting and love the
immediacy of it. I let the paint run
and drip on the canvas and see this as
a metaphor of the nature of the
medium, then follow with oil paint to
bring out the details in the picture.
Oils are richer in colour and can have
a range of textures which enable me
to paint detailed fabrics, a quality
difficult to achieve with acrylics.”
When asked if he has always been
interested in art, he replied, “I’ve
drawn since I can remember. At the
age of eleven I won my first art
81
competition and had a couple of
pictures shown on TV. From that
point, I knew that I wanted a career
in art and it became my motivation
for passing school exams in order to
qualify for art school.”
His earliest influences came from the
figurative artists of the Pop Art era in
the early sixties, such as Peter Blake
and David Hockney. Stan said, “My real
inspiration, though it is probably
difficult to see in my work, comes from
Robert Rauschenburg. The melange of
abstract and figurative elements really
attract me.”
Personally, I have a thing for old,
classic European cars, particularly
the Aston Martin. I asked Stan if he
had any paintings of the Aston and
he does. It turns out it is one of his
favorites. He said, “One of my
favourite pieces is called ‘Mrs.
Martin with Aston’, a play on words
that refer to the make of car in the
background. What I like most about
this picture is the successful (in my
eyes) way that the foreground and
the figure merge with the
background. I also like the slight
deception of the gender of the
figure. At first she is seen as male,
due to gender stereotyping and only
on second glance you see that it is a
female. I like that.”