Art Girl encounters fascist dictator disguised as painting teacher

Every Monday at 5:15 p.m. I lug my bright red portfolio and bulging bag of acrylic paints onto the metro and make my way to the Sorbonne's art building. Forty five minutes later, usually disgruntled and undoubtedly disheveled, I arrive in the painting studio. It's a tall room with unfinished walls, large tables and several sinks. When you enter the room two things will catch your attention right away — the presence of a nude in the corner, posing languidly on one of the painting tables, and the heavy scent of oil paint on oil paint on oil paint. While I am positive the french stance on nudity is more lenient than in America, I am also quite sure their stance on ventilation is equally relaxed.

There are around twelve students in my class, give or take the three breaking for a cigarette in front of the building at any one time. The teacher, Monsieur Dulom, is a man in his fifties, with longish dark brown hair, perfectly round black-framed glasses, and a clinically strong aversion to saying anything positive about any one's art.

In fact, never in my life have I encountered such a critical art teacher. For three hours he holds his hand behinds his back and saunters from one student to the next. The room is silent, but for the quiet swish of brush strokes, and Monsieur Dulom's low voice.

"Degoutant," he says, after looking at my painting for several minutes. "Les coleurs sont degoutant." (Translation: disgusting, your colors are disgusting). He then slips into a five minute description of the problem, gesturing with his arms, weilding grand metaphors. This is where my already lose grasp on understanding french loses complete hold...I watch him with big eyes, follow his hands as he waves them from the ceiling to a particular spot on my painting. His voice rises and falls, he sits, he stands. Then the room falls silent again. "Tu comprends?" he asks."Oui, merci," I say, in fact understanding little except that he is most definitely not pleased. I do however understand what he says to the next student, someone I consider to be cranking out Michelangelo-caliber portraits on a regular basis. "Ah, c'est la merde," Dulom says. This is shit.

The first day of class I was proudly setting out my new french art supplies — a big pad of acrylic paper, large tubes of acrylic paint, my pack of sleek new brushes and a pallet knife — when Monsieur Dulom strutted over.

"Qu'est ce que ce?" he asked as he rubbed a piece of my canvas paper between his two fingers.

"Uhhh...papier?" I replied. He pulled his glasses down to the tip of his noise and peered at me with a look of deep disdain.

"Do you know of any famous artists who painted on canvas paper?" he asked me, in french. I nodded no. "That's because there aren't any," he said. "This may be easy to carry on the subway, but you need to buy better materials, you need canvas." Before he turned he pulled his glasses back up his nose and said "If you don't take yourself seriously, no one else will."

In other words, welcome to painting class.