After teaching summer watercolour workshops now for about fifteen
years, I have been seriously considering discontinuing them. It's
demanding work as I not only teach but make elaborate lunches, with all
the shopping and cleaning up that that entails, and have to sort out
endless
problems like lost pajamas and passports, minor car
accidents, medical issues that arise, etc. The most tiring thing of all
is just assuring that everyone is having a good time whether it be
having a comfortable bed or progressing artistically, as although my
class is pretty reasonable pricewise, people often have paid exorbitant amounts of money
to get
here and I feel responsible for making the expense and effort to attend
the workshop worthwhile.
Yesterday I drove down to Albi on an errand. It's quite a long drive so I left early, intending to
visit a few lovely small towns in the Tarn en route. I took my paints
and managed this quick watercolour of Cordes-sur-Ciel where I had
spent a night with a friend recently. We had stayed in a room in the tall
medieval tower on the right and awoke in bright sunshine above swirling
mists in the valleys below, with distant island hills poking though. Absolutely magical so I was pleased to have the chance to go back so soon.
There
are many beautiful small villages this part of southwest France which
escaped the ravages of the two world wars: St Antonin-Val-Noble,
Castelnau de Montmiral, Bruniquel, Puycelsi, Najac, Sauveterre, and
Belcastel to name a few I have visited.
Suddenly I realised that perhaps
I need to turn the second week of the workshop into a traveling
adventure instead of painting, again, the beautiful but too familiar scenes in
the Lot I have been doing for years.
Here are some photos I took this last week.
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| The real Cordes-sur-Ciel |
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| St Antonin-Noble-Val, where last week we couldn't gain entry to the main square because Steven Spielberg was shooting a new movie called One Hundred Yard Journey. Charlotte Gray was also shot here, as well as Rignac, my village in the Lot. |
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| Two more shots of St Antonin-Noble-Val |
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| Two shots of the main square in Castelnau Montmiral |
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| View from Castelnau Montmiral |
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