Plein Air in France

This blog is devoted to paintings that I have done en plein air, en plein air in France because that's where I have lived for the past five years. Painting en plein air in France is wonderful! The landscape is gorgeous, with post-card views just about everywhere. I live in the Aude department, which is situated on the Mediterranean coast, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and offers an extraordinary variety of scenery. Within a half hour drive, I can find stunning natural beauty: snow capped mountains, rolling farmland hills, river gorges; but also those man-made scenes that evoke the essence of the countryside, like vineyards with row upon row of grapes in ever changing colors, fascinating at every season of the year. There are also the the classic scenes: tall ,dark cedars, against stone walls, parasol pines silhouetted on hilltops and the country's most plentiful supply of castles, both ruined and restored. In addition to all that, there is the sea, the Mediterranean Sea. Here a painter can follow in the footsteps of the early French plein air painters, on the Côte Vermeil, the rocky coast near the Spanish border. Farther north along the coast are the long flat sandy beaches of Roussillon, bordered with inland ponds where flamingos can be found at the right times of the year.

As well as showing what a wonderful place France is for plein air painting, I'm interested in celebrating just how fascinating plein air painting is in itself. There is a special magic that happens when an artist paints from 'life' - not from sketches, not from memory, not from imagination, not from photographs. Those are all valid methods, but painting en plein air, 'sur le motif' creates a connection, a sympathy, a living link between the painter and the subject, a connection that is lost or at least diminished, when painting in any other way.

I have been doing plein air painting for some time, so some of the work that you see here is not new. But stick around - as soon as the weather warms up a bit there will be lots of new work as well!