To get to Claude Victorine’s house you climb a steep road at the end of Lower Bay and then navigate a long series of uneven concrete steps which lead past her “atelier,” or studio. Her home is a single long room containing bed, mosquito net, a piano, a sitting area with a view of Admiralty Bay, comfortable chairs, a low table and a love-seat near the windows featuring pillows with the colourful geometric designs of her hand-painted silks. The walls abound with fabulous art and photos done by her daughters and the room feels like the home of an artist.
Claude Victorine, 93 years young, hikes this hill daily to swim off Lower Bay beach. She is slim and wiry, slightly hard of hearing but otherwise in perfect health. Born in France in 1926, she was the daughter of a doctor who “gave us a good way of life.” Her mother died when she was young and she went to boarding school from the age of 9 to 14. It was there, she claimed, that she learned “sharing” with her classmates, “We had the same pinafores, same food, same everything,” she explained in her heavily accented English.
World War II caused bombs to rain from the sky. “I escaped the bombs in Paris, in the north of France, and once on a train,” she recalls. “Friends dying -cut- but not me. And after that I was afraid of nothing. I was not moved by anything, nothing was very important. It is the way I am now.
“I am not afraid. I know that I have luck and I am in good health, I am strong, I need nothing and I can live on little.” Outside her modest home is a covered sitting area with stuffed chairs and a table, an outdoor kitchen and a privy. She lives very simply among the birds nesting in the surrounding trees. “I need beauty and harmony, and to have my family happy,” she says.
She was married at 18, and then a second time, producing two daughters and a son: Elisabeth (“Za-Za”), Frederique (“Fredo”), and Jacques. ZaZa sailed around the world with her husband, taking stunning photographs along the way (www.imagesud.com). Fredo (aka “Louloune”) lived on a boat for many years, producing beautifully hand-bound books of her art as well as fantastic, whimsical paintings. Jacques, a retired agricultural engineer, travelled the world advising poor countries how to have better yields.
While living in Paris, a Russian immigrant taught Claude how to hand-paint silk. She has imported very high-quality silk from the same merchant for 60 years and her paints come from a supplier in California after her original purveyor in Paris retired. Claude travelled to Martinique in 1968 and moved there in 1972, originally working as an Air Martinique flight attendant while hand-painting silk on the side. In 1980, she moved to Bequia where she has been producing her art for four decades.
“When I have silk, I paint on silk, when I don’t have silk I paint on wood, I paint on beads, I paint the calabash, wood frames… I have to paint- yes! And I would like to thank the people of Bequia for allowing me to live here in peace and harmony.”
You can visit Claude by appointment at her enchanting atelier, perched in the hills above Lower Bay. Call (784) 458-3150.
