This summer's trip to France - The Templar's Last Secret

Bruno's St. Denis - art journal collage
Magazine and Vintage book scraps 

If you have been following my blog for a while you may have notice the shift from using photos of the books I've read to photos of my art journaling. Often I find pieces which represent the theme of the book I was blogging about. Perhaps that is because my artwork is influence by my choice of reading or vice versa. Today I needed to create a piece specifically for this blog's book title - Martin Walker's newest, Bruno Chief of Police novel, The Templar's Last Secret. 

I began by imagine what Bruno's village of St. Denis and it surrounds would look like. One of the home decorating magazines I recently purchased featured French cottages. Prefect! Add to that a vintage book of French stories and another about the Impressionists and I was ready to get to work with my scissors and glue stick.

This novel centers around an ancient castle believed to have once been a Templar strong hold. A woman has fallen to her death following an attempt to deface the property with spray paint, but where is her climbing equipment and the can of paint? This isn't an accident and Bruno is now on the hunt. Before the reader knows it Bruno and his colleagues are tracking a small band of terrorists and trying to determine their target. One possible target is the treasured Lascaux caves in the region. Found by four boys in 1940, the caves are filled with paintings created over 20,000 years ago by the inhabitants of the region. The caves were closed eventually to the public to prevent their destruction due to the humidity created by visitors' respiration. A replica has since been created on the site of the original caves.

To the inhabitants of St. Denis the idea that their sleepy village is threatened by terrorists seems absurd. Doesn't that only happen in the big city? As one character states, there is no where we can be safe now. That was a chilly reminder for me. Here in the United States the increasing gun violence is an issue that we have all come to face. This new reality was never more apparent to me as when I sat in an auditorium with my colleagues - all of us school teachers - learning from our local law enforcement how to deal with an active shooting situation. Frightening though it may be, I will not allow this to paralyze me and prevent me from going about my business. I'm saddened that this is the new world we live in, but I know that I can work to be a source of peace.