I have been painting the last few days my commission for the cover art for the Coral Reef Restaurant at Epcot.  Since I can’t share any images yet,  I though I would post some work in progress photos of the painting I was working on while the design for the menu was being reviewed.

This piece is inspired by a gate in the neighborhood where I lived in Paris.  I lived in an area near the Trocadéro, where the Eiffel Tower is, called Passy.  This area has historical significance for a number of reasons, and evidence of it’s history are scattered about the area.

It was home to Benjamin Franklin for his nine-year stay during the American Revolutionary War.  He helped maintain French support for the war effort during his time there.  At that time, Passy was a rural village and not really a part of Paris proper.  One can see many tributes to him throughout the 16th arrondissement.  There is a statue near the Trocadéro, a restaurant near where my daughter went to school,  and a street named after him.

Artists, Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisotlived in the area and are buried in the Passy Cemetery. This is also the final resting place of Claude Debussy after being reinterred there from his initial burial at Père Lachaise.  His wife and daughter are buried with him. Balzac also lived and wrote in Passy and his home is a charming, quaint museum.

During the twentieth century, a group of avant guard artists part of the Cubists movement, dubbed themselves the “Artists of Passy”  to form a unit of solidarity. Few among them were painters, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger,  and Guillaume Apollinaire.