Julian Merrow-Smith Workshop

Road along the vineyard in the Vaucluse

From Oct 7 thru Oct 15 

I attended Julian Merrow-Smith's painting workshop 

in Provence, France. 

I can't even believe it - but it is true, it wasn't a dream.

As many of you bloggers know, blogging is hard. 
I think it is harder than painting ... 
and
painting is hard!

Anyway, finally getting around to posting about Julian's
workshop in his beautiful corner of the Vaucluse in Provence. 

It will be short (well, I guess not too short because of all the photos) but sweet,
as I like to see paintings and such much more than read text.
I am assuming many of you feel the same
 (but I actually am not sure of this - do you like to read long blog text?).

We were about 13 painters with a couple of non-painting partners, 
so there were a bunch of us to be housed and fed. 
Most were from the USA, one from Australia, 
and two people from England. It was such fun to meet them all.

Matt and I stayed in the 14th century chateau 
 le Devencet, along with about half the group.

The other half stayed in another chateau called
Grange Nueve, up the hill from ours. 
These chateaus are part of Domaine Saint Jacques, 
a private, small vineyard - far out in rural Vaucluse 
with the closest "larger town" about 20-30 minutes away, Carpentras. 
Avignon was the train station we arrived at from Paris, 
and the drive to our venue was at least an hour!

We were very well fed, indeed, at noon and night, 
by the wonderful chef, Angelique, her daughter 
and daughter's boyfriend, Bram (I think that is the correct spelling). 
Angelique and crew are from the Netherlands and live in Nice.
ALL of our meals were exquisite! 

Julian's first demo was a still life 

 I work on my first painting at the workshop

Julian teaches us some plein air techniques 

Julian's painting of the chateau - le Devencet

Trying my hand at the door to the courtyard at le Devencet

That distant mountain is Mt Ventoux and this road leads to le Devencet, behind me.
I am trying to capture the light with paint.

Before the rain I did get a fairly finished painting! But it was quick. I will try to find a photo of the finished painting for my next blogpost.

le Devencet

le Devencet by me

Julian painting a demo at Venasque, a village way up on a hill.

Julian's painting demo

I went out on a very windy "petit mistral" and
set up to paint the distant town Méthamis.
Things began blowing away so I had to find some rocks
to weigh the pochade box down.
Pictured is the plein air box Julian had for us to use while there!
All the supplies were given to us at the workshop.
We just had to take our paintings home
and they were mostly 6 x 8's, so they were easy to pack.

Méthamis

 Here is actual proof I went to Julian's workshop!

Julian and me ... being photo-bombed by Miranda,
who is a wonderful artist from Australia. The link is her Instagram page - go visit!

Sam Rachamin is another fab artist who was Julian's main workshop assistant/driver.
That is a link to his website and you must check it out ... beautiful, compelling paintings!

My funny and talented friend Miranda.

It was just amazing to be there in Provence taking Julian's workshop. 

I want to take this time to thank Julian and Ruth for an informative, fun and valuable workshop experience, my first in another country.

Thank you, dear blog reader, for visiting and letting me share this experience with you. 
I hope to blog maybe one more time about this workshop, what I took away in terms of
 painting technique and how to see (always striving for that).
so stayed tuned ...

and, as always ...

Happy Painting!