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Note: I'm late posting this installment of the book (rough draft). I'd written most of it but by mistake didn't save it and the entire chapter had to be rewritten. But, to my credit, I've been writing even though I'm sitting in the midst of the many delightful distractions of San Miguel de Allende! I hope you enjoy following along. Non-disparaging comments and helpful suggestions are welcome!  Next deadline is February 2, Groundhog Day! --Ellie 

Today, after breakfast, we reluctantly pack up to leave Jean Luc and Antonella at la Musardine. We’ve booked an Airbnb for three nights further downstream in Porte de Seine, but first we’ll stop in Vernon, a city that dates back to the Middle Ages. I’m not really looking forward to more art touring. I feel out of sorts. My belly is congested, digestion sluggish. I describe it as stress belly, but it’s hard to pinpoint what’s distressing me. I’m annoyed that I’m in France but don’t have an appetite for the delicious cuisine. Instead, I’m stuffed full of complaints!

Treading carefully, Roo ventures to ask, “When was the last time you painted?” From years of living with me Roo knows that when I do not make art, I can become quite cranky. Rewinding  the calendar, I realize it’s been almost two weeks since I’ve held a brush. Perhaps my neglected art practice this might account for my distress and maybe my current disdain for art tourism as well. Yes, Roo’s right on … again.

I never set out to not-paint—at home, I paint most every day, even if for only a few minutes. Yet, eventually, one thing or another distracts me and, sometimes, without realizing it, I’ve not made a mark in days. I understand that managing distractions is part of my job as an artist; nevertheless, preparing for an overseas trip seemed to justify disrupting my routine. Once that happens, however, the creative expression I’ve learned is so essential to my well-being grinds to a halt. Recent physical symptoms point to a blockage in my digestive system, yet I know from experience that this is not merely physical, but more likely another sort of constipation.

Roo’s prompt reminds me I know how to address this problem. I’ve intended to paint in France and brought along a small kit with supplies to do so; however, I just haven’t used them. It’s now clear I need to—after all, it’s what an artist does. Making art is the only effective remedy for what ails me and I’m not interested in suffering more than necessary. I vow to myself and reassure Roo that I will paint as soon as it’s practical, in Porte de Seine. I’m not sure what I’ll paint, but when the time comes I know I will paint something. In this moment, however, my mind churns things over and the best I can do may be to simply observe and, I hope, transcend my grouchiness.

For the past several days I’ve been ruminating about what it means to be a Real Artist. Obviously, Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell were Real Artists. Monet is one of the most popular painters in the world and the most beloved of artists in France. Joan Mitchell, while lesser known, in the last few years has gained in posthumous celebrity; the Retrospective at Louis Vuitton being one major demonstration of this, the recent sale of her paintings for millions of dollars, another. But what about those artists who haven’t gained that kind of recognition? What about me? What does it mean to be a Real Artist, anyway?

Questions such as these plague me when I’m feeling discouraged. Now, especially in relation to the BIRDS FLY IN project, it’s easy to doubt my artistic efforts. My attempts to find venues in San Diego, Cleveland, Milwaukee and other cities have not succeeded. I’ve been told by at least one curator that my credentials are lacking and that I need an NEA grant in order to be vetted. Maybe if I had an art degree, BIRDS would get the attention I and many others feel the project deserves. If only I were a Real Artist ….

If dealing with distractions is an ongoing task for an artist, for this artist discouragement is one of the most painful. I’ve been discouraged in my art-making for most of my life, my desire for making art disparaged by my family at every turn. When I was 11 my father said about a drawing I’d labored over for weeks, “Your perspective is all wrong.” He was an award-winning advertising illustrator and I took his words to heart in such a way I didn’t believe I could ever find a correct perspective.

Many years later when I had taught myself to paint, made several hundred paintings, and was starting to sell my work, my oldest sister declared with her elder sibling authority, “Well, it’s not like you’re a Real Artist.” She went on to inform me that Real Artists have to struggle to make their art important and are so involved with the struggle, they mostly don’t sell anything. For example, her son and daughter, both painters whose work was difficult to sell, were Real Artists, but their auntie didn’t qualify because her paintings were selling. Fortunately, her comments made no sense and I set them aside; in more vulnerable moments, however, I recall how they made me question my right to call myself an artist.

Even after 20 years of fulltime art practice, when I haven’t painted for an extended period, I can so easily stir up the dust of my father’s and sister’s remarks—I’ve internalized them as my own. As Roo has reminded me, the only cure for discouragement, and the negative feedback loop it engenders, is to interrupt it by making art. I will paint!

Leaving Omerville Fifi guides us with her charming French across more of the Vexin plateau’s lmpressionist landscape. Our route curves around grassy fields to reveal Chaussy, a charming medieval hamlet nestled on a verdant hillside. Close to the road, my eye is drawn to an ancient stone farmhouse and barn and sheep grazing in the adjacent meadow. I ask Roo to stop the car so I can photograph the scene.

Seeking references along rural byways had been my practice during the years I was obsessed with painting Michigan’s iconic barns. I would always get excited when I saw a farm with a barn, but it has been 5 or 6 years since this has happened. Will I use the photos I snap as the basis of a painting? I’m not sure, but I could be tempted. After all my barn paintings were very popular and it’s so reassuring to paint what people like.

From 2010 onwards for several years, the 30 x 30 inch canvases I painted in oil with bold shapes and bright colors, brought me a lot of regional recognition and a place in a national juried show in New York City. (At the time, a collector described my style as “Happy Hopper.”) However, in 2016 I tired of painting barns and soon after I began painting abstract pieces no longer based on outer references. This move to a more spontaneous, intuitive way of working puzzled fans who favored representational art, but it seemed there was no going back.

While painting from the inside-out was deeply satisfying,  my followers weren’t the only ones confused by the transformation to abstract expressionism. The change was abrupt and I did not seem to have control over it.  I could still paint representationally, but I no longer wanted to. In the midst of the changeover, one of my collectors had commissioned me to make a large barn painting. I completed it as I had other paintings, but it seemed lifeless to me and it wasn’t until I painted over it with expressive marks, and then repainted the barn on top of these, that I was satisfied with the result.

The new way of working required more of me than the old style did. I didn’t know exactly how to paint abstractly, but I began looking more closely at the paintings of Joan Mitchell and other Abstract Expressionists, each showing me how giving expression to one’s inner depths could be beautiful. I began painting to music and let rhythm guide my brush, hands, sticks, and other tools. I spontaneously picked up colors from my palette and placed them on the canvas without looking. Eventually, my exploration led me to discover marks that when I made them, looked and felt like my marks. These formed black calligraphic shapes that eventually revealed themselves to me as birds, “intuitive messengers of hope and healing for a troubled world.” I believed my ambition to bring these birds to that world had been fueled by my whole heart and soul. Now, that heart feels broken and my soul, empty and uncertain. My only hope is for greater insight as to the meaning of the dead end the project has reached.  

On one thing I am clear, however; I do not believe it has anything to do with my credentials, or whether or not I am a Real Artist. As we travel on, it also occurs to me that the concept of Real Artist is a silly one and has nothing whatsoever to do with authentic art-making as I have experienced it. Am I an Emerging Artist? A Mid-Career Artist? An Amateur? A Professional? A BFA or MFA? A Self-Taught Artist? A Real Artist? When I find myself obsessing about such things, I must paint, urgently.

We enter now the small medieval city of Vernon. After parking the car, we head toward the Seine and come upon the old mill house, painted famously by Monet and others, and a tower, a remnant of an ancient castle dating back to the 12th century. The river comes close to the edge and it’s pleasant to walk in the park alongside it, imagining the artists set up to paint there en plein air (back before magazines and contests made that a trendy thing to do). After a time, we climb a grassy hill to reach the Pont Clemenceau, built post-World War II to replace the one damaged by bombs; on the far side, we come upon four gigantic tour boats lined up at the dock, the same ones whose passengers are now visiting Monet’s house in Giverny.

Once across, we find ourselves on streets lined with the crooked walls and leaded windows of the half-timbered medieval structures typical throughout Normandy. The town looks like a page from an ancient fairy tale; yet, with a stationery store, a photography studio, an electronics shop, an immobilier, it’s been updated redesigned for the 21^st century business. I’m pleased that in addition to plaques celebrating Monet, there are also banners celebrating local artists hanging from poles along the main street (just as in my American hometown).  

Claiming pride of place in Vernon’s centre ville, however, is the Collegiale de Notre Dame, an imposing Gothic structure that towers over the other building. In many European cities today one finds the art, created over the centuries, more attractive than the contemporary religious aspects. Given my complicated history with religion, especially Catholicism, I’m not so much a fan of the art found in these churches. While often Roo wants to visit them more than I do, as soon as we go in, I’m glad I’ve come along to this one.

The high ceiling sanctuary is lined on all sides with more than a dozen leaded stained glass windows, two or three stories high, set in the thick stone walls. Looking closely, I’m struck by the way many of the windows feature not only literal depictions of saints and other figures from the Bible and combined with these are completely abstract designs, each window rendered in stained glass of harmonious colors—blues, purples, pinks, golds and greens. Mostly the old glass appears at the top of the windows, with the newer forming the larger area of the lower part and some windows are fitted out entirely with glass in the abstract design. The juxtaposition of old and new is stunning.

Placards placed in the sanctuary tell the history of the church. The windows we’re looking at now are the result of repairs made necessary by war. In August 1944, near the end of World War II, Vernon came under heavy bombardment as the Allies tried to take out the bridge over the Seine, and this church, only a few hundred yards from the river, was damaged. Repair of the windows didn’t take place until the 1970s. I’d love to know more about the process that led to the courageous decision not to replicate the old style representational design, but to create something entirely new.

Now at midday, the sun shining through the stained glass bathes the sanctuary with a subtle and beautiful light. The colors of the different windows strike a chord that combined, with the others, seems musical as well as visual. Transparent jewel light dances throughout the church, bouncing off the walls, the statues, the floor and, like a blessing, onto the people who are taking in all the wonder.

Like them, I am dazzled, and reminded of that moment of awakening I had as a small child, the unshakable and reassuring feeling of Presence the same now as then. I mindful also that had bombs not blown out many of the original windows, the beauty of these might never have been created. Similarly, coming to terms with hard times in my family has revealed  an ability I never might have otherwise uncovered. A brilliant light shines through all and, I’m grateful that through the art that people find the courage to make, beauty, truth and goodness may be revealed.

In this moment things I have been ruminating about for months, it seems, come clear. I realize now that each time I paint, I can open to that light and, letting the light use me, I am dancing color across the canvas or page, creating what has never existed before. The real Real Artist is something much greater than I am; and when I am truly making Art (and not just making paintings that might please me or others), I serve as a channel for that light. I don’t have to figure out what or how to paint. The light inside me intuitively guides me in every aspect of the process. I have known this before and I now know again for the first time with Julian of Norwich (and T.S. Eliot)  “All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”

I leave with a lighter heart than I would have believed impossible to find in a church. I’m hungry too! A delicious ham and cheese omelet at a nearby café satisfies my reviving appetite. Then, we walk over to the small museum where we find only one Monet, a small round waterlily painting, and a room full of amusing paintings of cats. Compared to the church with its dancing light, however, this cozy museum seems dim, the art it contains, muted, almost deathly in its silence. I want to get back out in the fresh air and sunshine. I want to paint.

Note: Enjoy this next installment that takes us to Claude Monet's famous home and gardens in Giverny, France. I didn't love it there, but I did find a growing satisfaction in beginning to explore what's involved in becoming a Real Artist.  Please let me know your thoughts .... Ellie

Our route to Giverny meanders along the Seine passing through La Roche-Guyon and several other historic and picturesque villages. The narrow road twists and turns, steep cliffs to the right forcing the eye to a wide view of the serpentine river. For a representational artist, every bend in the road presents another irresistible composition. While I could easily have stayed in Vétheuil, the journey to Giverny doesn’t disappoint.

The village of Giverny, on the other hand, seems to have lost its charm to art tourism. Monet—the reason people come to Giverny—left Vétheuil in 1881 and after looking around the area for a couple of years, in 1883 he eventually found a place to rent and eventually purchase in Giverny, only ten miles away. His life at the time was emotionally and financially very complicated. But he could see the potential in the property and settled in to eventually create a large studio, as well as the pond and gardens that have become the draw for more than half a million visitors annually.

By now we’ve seen on the river large excursion boats filled with passengers with this one destination foremost on their bucket list. We follow signs and, while the lot seems oddly empty, we park our car and walk a few hundred yards into the village proper. We have yet to see many people, in fact we spy only one or two couples on the pedestrianized street of the village. As we walk past cafes shut for the season, I dare to hope we will have the place to ourselves, while as the same time wondering why Giverny seems so deserted and, as a town, void of the signs that mark a town where people actually live. I’d had similar questions in Vétheuil, but there we saw a post office, a school, and even if we couldn’t see their occupants behind the curtained windows, houses that people clearly lived in. None of these are in evidence in Giverny. It seems to be a faux village, picture perfect, like the set of The Truman Show, and similarly unreal. Yet, for many visitors to Giverny (including me), I suspect Monet represents the quintessential Artist: Monet= The Real Deal.

And, now that I’m here in France, paying homage to Monet and Mitchell, the Real Artist question is foremost in my mind. Are these Art Giants somehow more authentic in their Art than I am? If so, in what way? If not, why do I discourage myself with doubts? Am I here to worship at the altar of their Art, like so many of these tourists, and what exactly does that mean? Thinking back to those populated excursion to the Orangerie and the Mitchell-Monet exhibit, I dare to hope we might have this empty place to ourselves that I might reflect along these lines.

Alas, once we show our tickets at the entrance gate, and go through to Monet’s house and garden, we are not alone. Buses from the large tour boats have already disgorged hundreds of tourists, many of them Americans, all of them with mobile devices. Having been diverted to a separate entrance, they’ve been herded into small clusters of 15 or 20, shepherded by a leader who speaks to them through the headsets with which all have been provided. Roo and I, hearing no such voices, follow signs that point us to the various attractions—Monet’s house, the flower garden, the waterlily pond.

We first look around the house, admiring the art reproductions, appreciating the famous yellow of the kitchen walls, table, and chairs, the blue and white tiles and gleaming copper, reminded by a barking docent: NE TOUCHEZ A RIEN! We head for the gardens.

Still a bit Covid-wary, I’m not so keen about being in close proximity to so many people. As everyone  jostles for souvenir shots in the many scenic spots, it helps that we’re outside. We follow in line along the path around the perimeter of the pond. Packed in on the far side of the pond, near one of the two Japanese bridges, we can’t help but overhear a French tour guide interacting with his flock.

The guide had just described to the group how Monet, whose painting obsession was neither understood nor admired by the community, had to pay the neighboring farmer to paint the piles of wheat straw on his land. Someone asks a question about the haystack paintings. The guide responds with undisguised irritation. Why do Americans insist on referring to them as haystacks when they are wheat strawstacks? the guide wonders aloud. He then attempts to inform his group about the distinction between hay and straw. His audience, however, persists, insisting they are haystacks because that’s what Monet’s paintings are titled. (I’ve been to the Art Institute of Chicago and, yes, their collection is full of these paintings and the work haystack appears all of those titles.) I suddenly twig that a longstanding translation error may be at the root of the current tussle. It appears that when Monet’s titles were translated into English someone ignorant of agricultural terminology made a mistake; and, ever since, most American English speakers know them, albeit incorrectly, as haystacks. Hoping that my two cents worth of insight contributes something to cross cultural understanding, I can’t resist offering  this possible explanation to the guide.

This group moves on and another approaches. In the interval Roo and I grab a seat on an almost vacant bench to rest for a few minutes and to snap a few pics of our own. The gardens and especially the pond—colored with the reds, oranges and purples of autumn and spanned on either end by the iconic curved bridges—are beautiful and ooze with the kind of romance non-artists often assign to painters. I overhear two ladies from the U.S. who’ve just met exclaim, “It’s so lovely!” and “I wonder if they do weddings here?”

Mindful of my reasons for this trip—my search for intuitive clues to my own artistic life, I try to avoid the rabbit hole it’s too easy for me to fall down into. I determine to open myself to whatever is here for me to learn from. 500,000 people can’t be totally misguided—there must be something here beyond the cynicism that seems to arise automatically in places like these.

Moving on, we arrive at the spot by the pond where Monet set up his easel for painting large canvases. I’m pretty sure he was not dabbling in romantic notions or concerned with renting out the space for special events. As a painter, I suspect his intent was quite the opposite and practical. He positioned himself, not to swan over the view, but to control his subject as much as possible and make shade for himself while he painted.

Obsessed with looking and seeing, this was after all the same artist who had painted the corpse of his first wife. Camille had been his model before she became pregnant with their son and, after some scandal, Claude eventually married her.  After succumbing to an intense illness at age 32, she lay motionless on her deathbed. Her modeling days, however, were not over. Author Emile Zola, a close friend of Monet, writes in his fictional L’Oeuvre inspired by the incident. “At first he resisted, but the vague idea took form, began to be an obsession. At last he gave way, took up a small canvas, and began a study.”

I’d never known this about Monet. Quelle macabre! Was this a gesture of grief, a desire to preserve the image of his beloved? Or, did he seize this opportunity to observe the color changes in her lifeless body? Given he’d already been dallying with Alice Hoschedé, who would become his second wife, during Camille’s illness, he must have had mixed emotions as Camille passed. But even allowing that painting may be an artist’s best way of processing emotions or that making images of the deceased might have been a more common practice in his time, Monet’s action seems a more than a little creepy.  When I tell an artist friend about “Camille on Her Deathbed,” he quips, “Well, he finally got his model to hold still!”

With Camille’s death, Monet clearly had finished with fidgety, difficult to control models. With his permanent move to Giverny, he could keep his garden-related motifs alive; and he did, in fact, paint them for the length of his own life. If you’re an outer-referenced artist you search out conditions and circumstances that match your vision, sometimes—if you’re Monet—risking life and limb to do so. (I learn later that Claude almost drowned painting a seascape in Etretat.) In addition, if you’re Monet, once you’ve achieved financial success, you’ll not only search out places to paint, but you will also create them. And, then, you’ll employ other people to care for them while you stand to one side, under a shade umbrella, to paint what you see. Monet spent tens of thousands of francs each year to maintain the gardens, planting (and replanting) waterlilies, in order to have the colors of his chosen palette in front of him.

Monet, we learn, was obsessed with his waterlily pond from its inception. Like a painting that refuses to resolve, he wrestled to own the property and drained the marshy land near the house to make it useful for his purposes; then, for the remainder of his life, he constantly tweaked it to achieve his desired result, never quite reaching the ideal of the vision that eventually fails him. The last 20 years of his life, Monet painted garden motifs almost exclusively, ultimately straining his failing eyesight to produce the yards of canvas (300 feet in length)  that form the la Grand Decoration that, after much strife, landed posthumously in the Orangerie.  Now, the vast studio in which Monet tortured those monumental paintings into existence, houses the Gift Shop for the tourist attraction. Largely innocent of the darker side of the creator of these bright gardens, as I had been, people queue up here to buy books, refrigerator magnets, or postcards bearing an image of the artist’s famed waterlily paintings.  

Declining to purchase, however, we finally move away from the crowds and return to the vacant non-village where we find open one café. Over a bowl of overpriced soupe l’oignon I reflect that if contemporary sensibilities prevent me from entirely liking the man’s headstrong personality, I do respect Monet’s tenacity and wonder if controlling behavior is necessary for an artist? And maybe I’ve understood wrongly—perhaps it’s not control but assertiveness that’s needed. Because of or, in spite of, Monet’s troublesome personality, when I inquire of Google on the ride back to Omerville, I learn that Monet’s art has indeed earned him a spot on every Top Ten List of Great, Famous, or Best-Loved Artists. It’s why so many, including me, have made the pilgrimage to Giverny.

Back at La Musardine in Omerville it pleases me that it seems to please our hosts, that we’ve paid our respects to Monet in Giverny and Vétheuil. (They don’t seem to know much about Joan Mitchell beyond her name.) We take a seat at the heavy oak table in Antonella and Jean Luc’s open plan living space. After sharing a round of apertifs with them—we raise a glass to Art—Jean Luc presents us with dinner: chicken with a coconut curry sauce, with perfectly cooked sticky rice and, for dessert, a custardy pear clafoutis with chocolate drizzle. Warmed with the delicious home cooking—so welcome after a week of eating out—we linger and chat. I’m pleased that when he learns I too am an artist, Jean Luc wants to explore my painting website.

Mostly we’re using French to communicate but they both know enough English to understand me, or Roo jumps in to translate. My paintings express me too. Interpreting Jean Luc’s nods and smiles as approval, but unsure if he’ll understand or be at all interested, I risk showing him “First Flight,” the six-minute audiovisual tour of my BIRDS FLY IN project. I look for signs that he understands what the multimedia installation is about and notice Jean Luc’s eyes tearing as he watches. Migration issues are global. I’m reassured to see that the project can touch people across international borders and cultural differences. While I’m not here seeking a venue for the project, I can see it’s having the desired effect far from Michigan and, for now, that’s ça suffit.

I go to bed feeling full and satisfied in so many ways with the enoughness of the day. I drift off to sleep, musing about Art and the Artist. If Monet—and in my view, Joan Mitchell—are Real Artists, what am I? Tomorrow, we travel downstream on the Seine to Porte de Seine.

Note: I'm back after the holidays on track with my goal to post a new chapter of Monet, Mitchell & Me: A Painter's Pilgrimage to my blog on Thursdays. It feels great to be working on a book again. Thanks for reading. I appreciate your support and encouragement.  Ellie

As we prepared for our trip to France and described our itinerary, several people asked what tour company we were going to use. We were to see many boats loaded with tourists as we traveled along the Seine, but we were not on them. Instead, we booked our own accommodations and once we’d left Paris, we would drive our own car and head downstream, in our own way. Today, we’re going to pick up the car in a Paris suburb where, when he was 14, Roo spent 3 weeks with a local family as part of an exchange program. (It was then he began to learn the French he would later perfect at the Alliance Francaise in London and Paris.)

 I love Paris and I am looking forward to getting out of the city. I love Roo and I need space. I wonder, how do Parisians live in such tiny apartments? When we travel, Roo gets up at dawn to walk and I usually sleep in. On this trip, however, I crave more alone time and space. I long to resume the practices I’d found helpful for centering myself. Yoga, meditation, reading, and journaling—all help to prime the pump of my intuition, making it more likely I’ll find more clues and a more meaningful experience. Roo walks for a couple of hours most mornings; and today I discover I can expand the time to sleep in and do my own routine. While he is out for his jaunt, I create a small space on the floor to do some yoga. Not just the legs that have been logging thousands of steps each day, but every part of me rejoices from stretching. This morning, when he returns with croissants and coffee, I’m ready to enjoy them.

Roo hauls our baggage down the six flights without complaint but he and I both know we’ve brought too much stuff with us—clothes for cooler weather—however, it’s in the 70s and we don’t need them. He wrangles the two large wheelie bags on board the RER train at the Gare du Nord. At the car rental place in Pierrelaye they show us the tiny Vauxhall we’d reserved and it’s clear we need a bigger vehicle. Roo impresses the agent with his fluent French and in a few moments we’re able to upgrade to a more accommodating and comfortable vehicle. Everywhere we go, people remark about his charmant accent anglais.

Although I have enough memory of my two years of high school French to read road signs, foreign languages are not my strong suit. As we travel to Omerville I’m glad we have our GPS navigatrix (who we dub “Fifi”) to help with listening and pronunciation. I’d chosen Omerville for our first 2-night stay for its proximity to Monet’s famous Giverny home and to the lesser popular Vétheuil. Leaving the jumble of suburban Paris behind, we ascend to the open fields and wide sky of the Vexin plateau where Omerville is set on a hill alongside green farms dotted with cows and sheep. A long allée of beech trees leads into this ancient village. The handful of stone buildings that line the narrow winding lanes include a church, a school, and an ancient manoir.  With nary a café or shop in sight, suddenly it’s clear we’re not in Paris anymore—this quiet spot in the world is France!

We find our B&B, La Musardine, comprises several farm-purposed structure set in a lush green garden that looks down an equally green and lush valley. Sniffing the tang of ripe fruit, when we go to meet our hosts, I discover by the front door to the farmhouse a large bush whose branches are loaded with mouthwatering figs, most bursting their purple skins and dripping juices everywhere. Later we’d eat the sweet fig jam our host Jean Luc cooks up; for now, we’re pleased to find a welcoming, comfortable place to unwind.

It's quiet at La Musardine. Apart from a couple of cats and a few chickens, we’re on our own and, although we have another plan, I could hang out here all day. Our hosts provide a delicious continental breakfast complete with homemade yogurt, croissants, coffee, and chocolate, (and jam). When we explain that our aim is to visit places where Monet lived and also Joan Mitchell, Antonella find us a brochure with information about les chemins de peintres, the paths of painters, and are pleased to encourage us to visit nearby Vétheuil only 15 minutes away. They don't have to twist my arm.

Once on the road, we’re immersed in the landscape so famously depicted by Claude Monet the Impressionist. Morning fog softens the edges and blends the sky and fields of the Vexin plateau which are punctuated by stands of poplars and clumps of large oak or beech trees. Even this low light mist shimmers. I ask Roo to slow down so I can take in the scenery. In my romantic revery, I imagine Monet taking his time on these country roads, scouting sites to set up his easel. (Later I learn that he loved to drive fast and received the first speeding ticket ever issued in Giverny.)

Because I find myself scouting painting sites, something I’ve not done since giving up outdoor painting some five years before, I wonder why the impulse to paint is so strong here. Do I simply want to capture my own impressions of this Impressionist landscape? It’s so pretty, so Monet-like—wouldn’t it be nice to paint a postcard picture, or better yet, a series? Do I want to paint the landscape because it is lovely, are other motivations in play? Do I want to paint my own “Monet” series to bring home and sell? I suspect it might be a bit of both. And, since I left my plein air gear at home, this clearly neurotic line of inquiry leads me to conclude that perhaps I’d made a terrible mistake. I’m mindful that sometimes “in my own way” means I can be my own biggest obstacle.

Meanwhile, after the short drive from Omerville, we enter Vétheuil and park our car near a school in the bottom of the village. Through its open doors we see children gathered around tables eating their lunch and their gleeful chatter fills the quiet village. Apart from the school, the town appears deserted and we set off walking up to the church that sits atop the hill a few hundred yards away. Before we reach the church, however, we come to the cemetery and go in through the wrought iron gate.

A sign gives us our first indication of Claude Monet’s history in Vétheuil: Camille, his first wife, is buried here. Camille had been Monet’s model in the early days of Impressionism. When she’d become pregnant with his child, Monet initially yielded to his parent’s wishes and abandoned her. Later, they did marry and Claude, Camille, and their son Jean eventually left Paris to live in a rented house in Vétheuil.  Within a couple of years Camille, however, became ill and at age 32, she died. (His model to the end and beyond, apparently, Monet took his easel to the deathbed so he could paint the various colors of her corpse.) The grave reminds me that Monet had a life beyond my knowledge of him as a painter of pleasant Impressionist landscapes and water lilies. And at least 3 years of his existence was spend here, in this very place, with this woman and the child he almost disavowed.

I’ve found little information about how Monet and his family figured in village life in his time but, clearly, modern day Vétheuil claims them—or at least him—as their own. (Camille Doncieux, one reads on the modern tombstone erected by “Les amis de Vétheuil” identifies her as “éspouse de peintre Claude Monet.”) Throughout the village, narrow lanes and streets boast plaques with reproductions of his paintings. One, at the bottom of the village, shows the view of the imposing church at the top of the hill. Another features a winter scene “The Road in Vétheuil in Winter.” In 1879, this was the entrance to Vétheuil from the road to La Roche-Guyon that we would visit another time; now it is rue Claude Monet. The house is not large but this is where he lived with his family and at some point that of his collector, Ernest Hoschedé—12 people in all. (It was a complicated situation! Alice Hoschedé who because Monet’s second wife cared for Camille as her health declined, yet burned all of Camille’s letters to Monet after she died.)  No doubt this cozy living situation raised a few eyebrows in the village and, for Claude, I can easily imagine he’d pack up his gear to paint in winter—or any other time—just to get out of the house.

Other plaques remind us that while Monet lived in Vétheuil, other painters came to visit and enjoy the scenery and Monet’s influence, Pierre Bonnard, among them. Then, many years later, Joan Mitchell found her way there too. Joan would famously disclaim that Monet exerted any influence on her painting but, having purchased la Tour, the property for which Monet’s house was the gardener’s cottage, she would admit she shared his liking for the view across the Seine to the village of Lavacourt. Both apparently enjoyed the parklike green space below their respective homes along the river. Monet built a small dock there and would launch a boat rigged so he could paint the scene midstream. Mitchell is seen in photos walking her dogs in the park that seems unchanged as we walk through it on this warm autumn day.

We discover a plaque with an image of Mitchell’s “River” is installed in this area now; it’s the only one I find in the village. While Joan Mitchell’s bought her home in the village in 1967 and lived there until her passing in 1992, Monet rented his dwelling and was resident for only 3 1/2 years, her presence apparently made less of an impression on les amis de Vétheuil l than his. Monet based his painting on scenes familiar to the villagers both in his time and a hundred years later. Mitchell, on the other hand, did not depict the village in any overtly representational way and titled her works only after the fact. (The painting she calls “Vétheuil” was actually created in a studio in Paris.) Add to this the fact that the property she owned “The Tower” looks down on the village and behind a privacy wall that today makes viewing it impossible. Perhaps the expat Joan was more aloof than Claude, the French nationale? Or maybe the difference in the number of plaques here in Vétheuil reflects a gender issue. Or, could it be that here in France—and in the world—Monet is simply more of a celebrity than Mitchell? I think of her as an Art Giant—relative to Monet, however, maybe not so much--in New York yes, but not here.

Wandering the village it’s easy to conjecture about the life each of the artists lived here and how the place affected their art-making. The outdoor painter in me has little trouble framing a scene that might have caught Monet’s eye but trying to imagine what inspired Joan Mitchell here is more challenging. I’ve been taking photos of bushes, berries, and weeds she might have encountered as she walked these roads thinking these images might have unconsciously filtered into her abstract paintings. I’m trying to put myself in their place here; however, when I put aside my musings and projections, I see my photos show what I myself am noticing. Irrespective of what brought me here, lovely Vétheuil itself has charmed me.

In addition to its proximity to Paris, the quiet village features pleasing light-colored sandstone buildings (and one pink one!)—how nicely the church and houses perch on its hills and within its valleys! Gardens filled with yellow, red and orange autumn flowers abound, and there are great distant blue vistas to enjoy, not to mention the River Seine peacefully carving its gentle valley as it done for eons.  I love being here! I could paint here! Why not live here? Entranced, Roo and I find ourselves drawn to a storefront where we peer at the two listings in the window of the agence de immobilier. And, yes, here we some very reasonably priced properties are available here. Here’s one we could have had for 174,000 € but it has recently sold. Reading the small print we see the house also included a 79 man with a lifetime claim to residency. We once bought a house in Vieques, Puerto Rico that also came with a tenant—it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker for us. Oh well, let’s keep our eyes peeled.

On our way back to the car I spy a mural.  There’s Monet, Mitchell and a handful of other artists with connections to M & M and to the place, transcending time, buddies all, hanging out, lifting a glass at the local café. What is it about celebrity artists that makes us believe that they are not like the many thousands of artists who never receive worldwide or even national recognition. Being in this place has put me in mind of the humanity we share and the possibility that the true value of art-making—for artists like me, at least—lies in a domain beyond fame and fortune.

On this note, we leave Vétheuil for Giverny, proceeding (with help from Fifi) in our own way.