This is the view of the Esterel Massif in the distance from the kitchen window in my mother’s small flat/apartment. Being over the kitchen sink it was nice to be able to see the view while cleaning up even if one had to duck slightly and look diagonally over the neighbour’s rooftop and through a gap in the buildings to see the mountain some 15 miles or 25 kilometers in the distance on the far side of the valley. This was one of the views that sold my mother on the flat and one of the benefits of being close to the top of the hill on which the village was located. Of course, after my mother’s heart attack and bypass surgery at the age of 53, she had second thoughts about having to climb that steep hill every time she came back from going practically anywhere.

This particular landscape was done in pastel pencil, Somebody had given my mother a full set of Prismacolor pastel pencils and she drew this to decide if she wanted to work in this medium. As this seems to be the only surviving sample, I think the answer was no. I’ve learned that Prismacolor pencils are not strictly speaking pastels, as pastels are usually chalk based and the Prismacolor uses an oil based pigments in their pencils. Regardless, I don’t think it was holding her back in comparison to her usual work with a brush or palette knife.