LONDON 2009

From the time I was a teenager I've wanted to go to London. I've been to Europe many times and never made it there. Paul was born there and had studied a short course in microscopy during the eighties in London. I was very excited to be going to England. We took the Chunnel from Brussels and arrived at St. Pancras station. 

We had booked our hotel in  Bloomsbury near the train station for convenience. The East Indian desk clerk, Hans, was originally from Africa. He kept asking if Paul was related to a previous guest from Wales and seemed to find it hard to take no for an answer.  The Booking.com description of the hotel said that some rooms overlooked a garden so we requested one in our reservation. The garden turned out to be a 10' x 10' walled brick patio with wilted potted plants and a stack of moldy mattresses. To say that the room was "cozy" is an overstatement. We could barely move. While clean, the shower was impossibly small and water went everywhere. Still the proximity to the British Museum and being two blocks from all the bus lines and the train station made up for the inadequacies and the full English breakfast included in the price of the room helped.

The collection at the British Museum is fabulous. Notorious treasures like the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, antiquities from every corner of the globe are housed in the British Museum and we spent days revisiting the collections. For free! The British are so civilized!

The British people are some of the most polite, friendly and hospitable I've ever met in my travels. Some of them were the stuff of fiction. Sitting across from us on a city bus on the way to the Tate Modern was a man in his sixties with a tuft of hair on his otherwise bald head, glasses like coke bottle bottoms and missing teeth who whistled a three note tune every so often and I think said something about tickety-boo. You know someone that out of it has had a rough time but his good humor and odd behavior are pure Monty Python.

Listening to a young East Indian man studying economics complain of the cost of college in London over a curry dinner, watching children play in the fountain in Russell Square, a Sri Lankan demonstration in front of the Parliament buildings, doing our laundry in a laundry mat with an elderly Chinese woman; all these experiences make London a wonderful memory and a place I can't wait to get back to.

BRUSSELS 2009

We were advised by friends and travel books to bypass Brussels and go to Brugge instead. I'm glad we didn't listen to their advice. While Brussels will never be on the list of my favorite European cities it is fascinating on a number of levels. Brussels is the seat of the European Union and consequently buzzes with diplomatic activity. The juxtaposition of the ancient architecture with the ultra modern is interesting. The Museum of Ancient and Modern Art houses the most magnificent collection of Northern European art in the world. Belgium is a monarchy and when the King is in the country (he was) the flag flies over his palace and the royal gardens were beautiful.

We spent our few days in the heart of the city which is geared to tourists and diplomats, from the sublime to the profane. Contrary to what we'd read the food was unremarkable and no we didn't have mussels in Brussels. We discovered that a french fry is a french fry whether it comes in a fancy paper cone or newsprint. 

RECENT PICTURES OF EUROPE

We recently returned from three weeks in Europe. We began our trip in Amsterdam then moved on to Brussels. We took the Eurostar under the channel to London then on to Bath and the Cottswolds. We finished our trip in Paris. Here are some of Paul's photographs beginning in Amsterdam.

LOOKING BACK AGAIN

   In 1993 I resolved to put my music career to rest. I had been a professional singer/songwriter for twenty-seven years at that point.  I had been 'paying to play' for years and the musicians I was working with at the time, although very talented individually, had absolutely no concept of inter connectivity when we performed. They ran over me like a freight train with amplification and I have the hearing loss today to prove it. 

   The music industry and I had a mutual mistrust of one another. The industry couldn't figure out how to categorize me for marketing and I didn't want to be pigeon holed. Unlike many of my musical friends, making the transition from performer to non performer was easy for me. I relegated performing to a youthful passion that had waned and took up painting for my creative expression. 

   But periodically in the years to follow, music would resurface in my life. I was hired as a lyricist for an MGM animated feature. Singers recorded my songs and most recently I was asked by Marc Myers from www.JazzWax.com to discuss my collaboration with the great jazz pianist and composer, Jimmy Rowles, on the song LOOKING BACK.  I wrote the lyrics for Jimmy's haunting melody when I was a teenager and Jimmy was somewhere on his way to sixty. Retelling the story of my long, albeit sporadic, relationship with Jimmy made me realize that making music was not something I could turn off and on like a spigot. The joy of it could lay dormant for years but spring to life again with a little encouragement. 

   I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason; there is no such thing as chance. I'm waiting to see where this new resurgence of music in my life will lead me. In the meantime I have a new idea for a painting.

   

MORE WORK BY DORIAN WELLS

In 2008 Dorian was commissioned to paint a race car for the San Francisco soapbox derby sponsored by Red Bull. This was the second Red Bull event Dorian was invited to participate in, the first being the group show at the Sugar Factory in Manhattan. 

DORIAN SEBASTIAN WELLS aka DOR 1

Paintings, collages and sculpture retrospective.

THE 2006 PRAGUE PAINTINGS AND PASTELS

Prague is a city for artists. Inspiration is everywhere, from the architecture and sculpture down to the iron gates, fences and cobblestone patterns in the streets. Baroque, Expressionism, Cubism, Jugendstil, Functionalism. The city is a treasure trove of art. These are a few of my works from 2006 inspired by my beloved Prague.