Painting by Brian Carmody
ARTISTIC REFLECTIONS IN FRANCE May 2005: By Bill Gasson
Unless I’m missing something there seem to be very few overseas travel tours organized for New Zealand artists. Australian and British art magazines regularly feature tours led by accomplished artists…….
New Zealand’s isolation, travel costs and the limited number of artists prepared to lead groups abroad seem to combine to curtail the opportunities for artistic holidaying groups. Now, however, Wellington watercolour artist Brian Carmody has taken on the challenge in partnership with Whangarei-based French tour operator Solange Bely.
She organizes walking holidays twice a year that combine scenic, off-the-beaten track walks with hotel comforts, excellent French cuisine and wine in France’s picturesque Aquitaine region – the coastal southwest that embraces the Basque region and Pyrenees. She then drives her group up to the Dordogne region.
We joined Solange on one of her two-week trips and I maintain they’re unique because she has lived in the regions visited and introduces us as friends to her friends and family.
So we: walked through forests, villages, vineyards and along hilltops, met members of her family and French friends, ate to total satisfaction, stayed at family-type hotels, developed a respect for the French Basque people, enjoyed daily picnics and pineau – brandy and grape juice – aperitifs, paddled down the Dordogne river, consumed velvety French red wines, danced and sang and visited centuries’ old handmade paper and walnut oil mills.
We also: explored caves with prehistoric paintings, watched a pelote game, stood on Urkulu, a 300 BC Roman stone lookout in the Pyrenees, and enjoyed a 360 degree view of the hills that folded into distant Spain, visited markets, historic chateaux and the cliff hanging houses of La Roque Gageac.
Along the way we squeezed into an underground, Roman built acquaduct, followed scallop signs used by the pilgrims of Compostelle, visited a sheep cheese-making farm, joined in St Emilion’s pre-grape harvest festival and fireworks display, swam in rivers, marvelled at the floodlit beauty of the medieval town of Sarlat and met various artists.
There were so many opportunities for artists to sketch and record the scenes.
Solange’s company, Troubadour Travel, has organized this painting and walking tour in September that will embrace most of these attractions including visits to locally-based artists. Her starting point, the fishing port of St. Jean de Luz on the Atlantic coast, is picturesque enough to keep artists happy for days. But then she takes off for the Pyrenees and other art-inspiring scenes and she and Brian combine walks with time out for painting.
That’s the good news. The sad news is that Solange limits her trips to about eight people and the art group plus her other trip in September are full. Solange is planning two trips next year – one in June and one in September – and has just started taking bookings for both of them.
Hopefully Solange and Brian are starting a trend here that artists in Australia and elsewhere have enjoyed for years.