I need to begin by saying, for the record, I am not an artist. While it would be nice to be able to draw with greater skill than, say, your average Neanderthal, it would also be nice to carry a tune, and yet I don’t waste time regretting either. I can roast a pretty yummy chicken and I satisfy myself with that.

So if you think about it, it’s funny that I wound up at a botanical sketching and watercolor masterclass in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques in the southwest corner of France. Looking back, it began like all great adventures, by being open to new things and stepping into the unknown.

Years ago, Keith and I attended a few botanical art workshops at a local distillery. I have to say, the “free cocktail with purchase” was probably the main draw, but we knew the teacher, Lara Gastinger, socially, and thought we might as well give it a whirl.

I was roughly as bad as I expected, but I enjoyed it more than I expected. It turns out, stippling is medicine for an over-active imagination. So we attended these evenings when they fit with our schedule. Then, when my son brought his girlfriend, an artist, home from college, I thought she might enjoy it as well, but seeing as they were under 21, an evening workshop at a distillery wasn’t in the cards, even if the timing had been right. So we asked Lara to come to our house and give us a family lesson. We all had such a good time that my kids spent the next few days traipsing up and down the alley that runs behind our turn-of-the-century house, hunting for specimens, and I framed all of our work for the guest room.

Fast forward years. A global pandemic, a move to Italy, a resettling in the United States, a move to Manhattan’s lower east side for my eldest son and his girlfriend, a begrudging yet thrilling release of our middle child to Rice University in Texas, a start of high school for our youngest, a handful of books written and launched into the universe.

One early spring day, I went for a creekside jog, but cut the run short after a spectacular fall across the leaf litter. I stopped to talk to a friend on the corner across from my house and the conversation turned (as it often does with me) to travel. I told her I felt curiously empty of wanderlust. In fact, I had thought about this lack of travel motivation over my coffee just that morning, wondering if I needed to wait around for that spirit to move me or if the spirit would come by starting to plan a trip. After all, that often works for writer’s block. Beginning, even in a fumbling way, it releases a wellspring.

My friend told me she had been feeling the same odd absence of wanderlust, but then got Lara’s newsletter where she read that Lara would be teaching a botanical drawing and painting class in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region of France. She’d decided to sign up, even though she doesn’t draw or paint, and then build her family vacation around it, heading to Portugal for two weeks before the weeklong workshop. I was thrilled for my friend. How often do we as mothers build in time for ourselves, to pursue our own interests, nascent or well-explored?

Later, I got a text from that friend, asking if I wanted to join her.

Weirdly, after all that time spent supporting her adventure, my instant thought was, “I can’t do that. It’s way too self-indulgent.” Bear in mind, I had literally thought the opposite when we talked on that street corner. Not one scrap of me thought it was self-indulgent for her. But for me? Apparently different rules.

But I agreed to think about it. I perused Clos Mirabel’s website, clicking slowly through the photos, lingering on the one of the vineyards rolling into towering grey mountains. I read the week’s schedule for the painting holiday. The mornings spent gathering specimens to draw and paint. A field trip into the Pyrénées. Evening aperitif on the terrace overlooking the vines, before a nightly four course dinner.

I wrestled until the next morning, when I realized I would be spending more on Gabe’s summer enrichment activities than the cost of this weeklong stay in the French Pyrénées, even factoring in airfare. Over breakfast I opened my mouth several times to say I was considering it, but then I closed my mouth again. I couldn’t even say the words, it felt so foolish.

Finally, I told Keith I wanted to go, but wasn’t sure. He nodded and asked me to send him the information. I did and he sent me back a simple question. “Why wouldn’t you go? This is incredible.”

So I told Lara, laughing that saying yes might wind up being the most revelatory aspect of the trip. Saying yes meant centering what I wanted, what would fill me. Rather than designing a family vacation around what might work for others, we wound up timing our family vacation and designing the destinations to straddle the Pyrénées. But more on that later.

As it turned out, the most revelatory aspect was still to come. Because I had no idea what awaited me in the south-western mountains of France.

It felt strange, I’m not going to lie, taking the train on my own to DC to catch my overnight flight to France (my friend hadn’t been able to come after all, so I was quite solo). I’m used to the buffer of traveling with my family, Keith striding into the breach with our labeled passports and tickets in a carefully organized folder. I felt a bit liberated to manage on my own, arriving at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport and then taking a tiny plane to Pau (pronounced Poh). I blinked as we descended. Those mountains, they left me breathless.

Ann, the owner of Clos Mirabel, picked me up at the airport and we fell instantly into easy conversation as the car wound its way up, out of the valley, and into the foothills. She told me how she and her husband André read an article years before on where to retire in France, and opted for Pau as a livable destination of great beauty and out of the range of the usual tourists who typically head east to the Alps (at which point I looked around and shook my head. I mean, these are good mountains). As we stopped to let a flock of sheep cross the road, she told me that they fixed up the 18th century manor house and created a spot for seminars and workshops. They recently began a shift to art master classes, thanks to André’s daughter Rachel and her husband Xavier.

When we pulled up to Clos Mirabel, my mouth, once again, dropped open. How could it be more beautiful than the photographs? The white manor house stood brilliant against the green trees sloping behind, the sky arched blue above, the pool tossed light around like so much confetti. All of it overlooked the vineyards to rolling hills of Jurançon to that thrust of jagged mountains.

I showered and changed and hurried back out to drink in that view, and wound up just in time for aperitif on the terrace. I am one of those lucky people who often finds herself just in time for someone to hand me a drink. This time the drink was a glass of chilled Jurançon sec, the local wine which is usually on the sweet side, but when made dry like this is full of lush fruit, white flowers, a hit of minerality, and an almost spicy complexity.

At this point, the guests descended on the terrace to raise glasses and take in the view. Now, you might not know this, given that I string my innermost thoughts and vulnerabilities across the internet, but I am actually quite a shy person. I nodded at this guest and that, listening to how this person had been doing botanical drawing for twenty years, this one for just ten and I wondered what the heck I had gotten myself into. People seemed to know at least one other person, either they arrived together or they knew each other as fellow Patreon subscribers to Lara’s content. I smiled hard and told myself I was having a very good time.

Soon though, we were ushered into the dining room and this, well, this I know how to do. Thus began a week of pushing my boundaries and challenging myself, while leaning into the comforts of a table, lovingly spread with delights that, in all my fantasizing about the week, I failed to adequately imagine.

Rachel is a self-taught chef. This translates into her making food that, while elevated and nuanced, maintains all the heart of country cooking. Lettuce from the garden, beets freshly released from the earth, sun-warmed berries. Each morning, Rachel laid out a spread of bread and cheese and butter and a selection of local honey along with kiwi jam that I felt sure came courtesy of the kiwi arbor that flanked the garden. Come lunch time, we’d gather again around the buffet of salads and light entrees like pissaladière (a kind of onion tart with black olives and anchovies—basically the tart equivalent of an umami bomb) or home-cured salmon or toasts topped with melted rounds of local goat cheese. With the ubiquitous free flowing wine and glorious cheese board and dessert like a berry cake or creme caramel. At lunch!

That first night, we were all too stunned as each platter came out, too shy with our new acquaintances to do more than breathe out raptures at each course, one of the guests saying that she felt separation anxiety at the thought of the cheese plate being whisked away. But after that first night, each course was accompanied by cameras, capturing the awe. Not only was everything delicious, but with Rachel’s background in fashion, all of her platters resemble works of art.

Night after night, we feasted on salads like grilled grapes and fresh mozzarella with a fennel dressing or watermelon and feta, main courses like lamb leg cooked until it fell apart or a roll of pork, with sides like stuffed whole baby squash or eggplant so good one of my company drank down the extras, to our riotous applause. Always cheese for the third course, a seemingly mad variety. Then dessert like chocolate chestnut cake with coffee ice cream or peaches cooked in syrup with lemon verbena and served over fromage blanc (think of a a cross between sour cream and cream cheese). Plus wine, wine, wine.

Followed by coffee, tea, and vervain, the latter which became a theme of our week (which is why its appearance in the peaches was so appreciated). New to most of us, vervain is lemon verbena, a common after-dinner tea in France. What a surprise to lift the lid of the teapot to find a branch of lemon verbena!

Food like that brings people together, and soon we were talking and laughing across the table. Someone from Clos Mirabel sat with us most nights to answer questions about the area, the wine, the food.

Now, I know I was there to paint not to eat, so perhaps it seems odd to spend so much time telling you about the food, but listen—not having to plan or make meals was a draw of this week away, so I want you to feel along with me the joy of sitting down to table and having course after course appear with no input from me. My only job to enjoy it, and enjoy it I certainly did. One of my Charlottesville friends teased me that I’d probably spend more time sketching the food than the plants and I laughed with her, but as it turns out, I was too busy sitting there with my eyes closed to better taste the food to think of drawing it.

For those of you not inclined to painting holidays, Clos Mirabel is open year around, and welcomes guests in the Bed and Breakfast (rooms in the Manor House) or in self-catering houses and apartments. While full board is only available as part of the painting holiday packages (of which there are many, for all kinds of art), you can request dinners with advance notice. I should add that Clos Mirabel is up the hill from Pau, a delightful city that I found refreshingly free of tourist bait—just a French city with French people living their French lives. I encourage you to consider a stay. After hearing my stories, Keith and I are committed to a trip together at some point, and will definitely request at least a dinner or two. I can’t remember the last time I felt so cared for.

Which was important for me, in ways beyond culinary appreciation. Botanical art is hard for us newbies and I admit, I often felt a bit like a wrung rag. I’d emerge from the studio, blinking at the sudden vast view after studying a dried artichoke for the last few hours.

I had told myself I didn’t care about being the worst in the class, and it was a nice story, but it wound up not being entirely true. My lack of skill did frustrate me. Mostly because not having the image in my mind match my feeble scratchings made me cross with myself. And also because I didn’t want anyone resenting my presence, feeling I didn’t belong.

Now, not one person intimated this, and in fact, they were encouraging, embracing, and foretold how this would be the first of many materclasses for me, once I realized how fun they were, but it didn’t matter. I kicked myself when I was down anyway.

Lara demonstrating botanical painting at Clos Mirabel

Honestly, now that I’m in my 50’s, I give myself all kinds of grace, so the torquing required for this amount of self-flagellation felt unfamiliar. Nonetheless, I found a way.

This reached a peak during landscape painting. It turns out my ability to paint a landscape rivals your typical kindergartner. I wanted to hide my work, hide myself. We then had a field trip to the Pyrenees to practice landscape painting, and I opted to hike during our first stop, delighting in the details of the flora and the background of the mountains. During our second stop, curtailed on account of heat, I skipped trying to paint the landscape and instead photographed the herds of cows and horses milling about and drew the flowers and admired my peers’ work (especially the sweet little sketch of me one of new friends made).

Wine and cheese helped assuage the insecurity. Thus bolstered, I had a realization. I was trying to hang in there with my peers on their day three, but my skill level was still on day one. I needed to feel more comfortable with the basics before trying to move on. So I (and you will find this simply incredible) SKIPPED THE TRIP TO THE WINERY (here I’ll wait for you to pick your jaw off the floor), to literally paint circles. I sat alone in that hot studio and painted circle after circle until I could make them look like a sphere.

I came down for dinner and then slipped back upstairs to my room to pop in my AirPods and paint more circles. As I painted, I reminded myself of the Italian expression that got me through my staggering language errors while living in Italy, “piano, piano”. Slow, slow. One step at a time. I worked to pull the paint across the page in a way that looked smooth, not blotchy.

Finishing for the evening, I held my work out to examine it. It wasn’t great, but it was better. Better enough. My lines looked a little less jerky, the paint transitioned more smoothly, and my sphere had a hint of reflected light on the right side. I decided I would just work more intentionally from then on, picking simpler specimens, and focusing on basic skills.

Every evening afterwards, I skipped upstairs to practice after dinner. And that practice, that focus, wow, it felt incredible. One night after dessert I mentioned to Lara that I was heading upstairs to stipple and she looked alarmed, telling me I was doing fine, I shouldn’t pressure myself. I hastened to assure her that I wasn’t mad about it, on the contrary, I was finding that kind of focus freeing. There’s a kind of hushed beauty when it’s me and my pen.

On the first day when we all said our goals, everyone had sensible answers about improving their lines, their ability to replicate botany, and I said I wanted to get away from words. As a therapist and writer, I traffic in words. They are my currency and I swim in them so thoroughly that sometimes I’ll tap out in the evening to watch something I’ve already seen before so I can not focus on the words.

Well, I learned that and more in botanical sketching and painting. In fact, I not only escaped words, it felt like I escaped time. I’d swim along, drawing petal after petal of a blackberry flower while humming along to music, when suddenly I found it was midnight and I really needed to go to sleep.

I remembered my first class with Lara when I realized that stippling is medicine for an overactive imagination and I chuckled to myself. And how! I found a kind of peace getting lost a paper’s texture and a paint’s lucidity.

I guess I can say that I did improve, but more than that, I discovered a kind of nourishment in what had grated just days before. One of my friends from home said something that knocked me back and allowed me to open my arms even more to the experience. She lauded me for “becoming a beginner again.” YES. I’m a beginner. I’m a bit of a mess, because I’m a beginner. And good for me for walking into this state of unknowing, for getting knocked down a few to allow myself space to rise to the challenge. My product may not be much to look at (Keith said he couldn’t wait to see my work and I told him I didn’t wish to excite his anticipation), but the process, that I fell in love with.

It reminded me of our five weeks in Switzerland, when my sense of scale toppled. I walked so much of every day that when I ran across a sign pointing the way to a detour, I’d nod to myself that it was only an extra hour or two. Once you give into the process, you think of it not as a hurdle to get to the other side, but honor it as freedom from the road taken.

Then we began our final projects. I didn’t realize until Lara pointed it out, but my final project was, fittingly enough, a story. I drew and painted the life of a blackberry, from the flower bud that resembles a tightly curled rose to a small green cone of barely discernible drupelets, to the final blackberry, shiny and, I gotta say after hours of holding one in my hand, kinda majestic. I framed the blackberry images with one lemon verbena branch and one rosemary.

The lemon verbena felt important to me, not just because it had become such a feature and symbol of our week, but because when Lara first showed us how to draw curling leaves, I thought to myself, “How nice for her.” But in patient Lara style, she showed me how I could, in fact, draw them myself and I found a total power in drawing leaves turning. It felt a bit like a triumph, getting those leaves down on paper.

It’s astonishing to me that we spent two days on those final projects, working hours and hours with a kind of single-minded focus I’d never seen before. One of my new friends took photographs of us at work, and they sum up the week for me more than almost anything else. Each of us dismantled from the everyday, tucked into a kind of pocket where time is immaterial and the world spins on without us.

With the unseasonable heat raging all over Europe, we couldn’t work in the studio those final days. But I have to say, I loved working outside in the mornings and then at dining room tables in the afternoons. By mid-afternoon, I needed a break and would hop in the pool, swimming back and forth, enjoying the hush and the view over vineyards (an antidote to the close work) until I felt refreshed and ready to fall again into the slipstream of stippling a leaf.

Through all this, Clos Mirabel staff walked behind us, putting out cookies or oranges drizzled with rosewater and a fall of pistachios beside the iced coffee they learned we liked as an afternoon pick-me-up.

That sums up the staff at Clos Mirabel. They rotated around us, keeping us upright, and then stepped in where they could. I told Lara, “This level of attentiveness, it’s not like a spa with flavored water. It’s like we’re cherished family.” She laughed and pointed behind me where Xavier was putting out the water with grapefruit and herbs. Still, we agreed that Clos Mirabel didn’t have of a “you’re here for luxury” vibe so much as a “we see you working, we want to take care of you”.

One of the guests particularly liked the wine from the first day, so Xavier made sure to have a bottle of it chilling along with each evening’s aperitif. Once at dinner when Rachel told us what cheeses we’d find on the cheeseboard, I noted that the camembert was at the other side of the table. No problem, I’d just wriggle in there and get a slice. But before I could, Rachel appeared with a whole camembert on a plate for me.

The last night, we had an exhibition where we talked about our process. By this time, we’d fallen into the routine of dressing for dinner. As a person who considers daytime jammies the height of sophistication, it’s funny that I enjoyed this, but I really did. Every afternoon, I’d put my drawing implements away until after dinner, and then I’d shower and change into something floral (natch). I’d fasten earrings and put my hair into a bun and slip downstairs just in time for Xavier to hand me a crisp white wine. I loved this part of the routine, a kind of celebration of our day’s work, when we’d share more, and open more, and trust each other more. I couldn’t believe it when I found myself talking about my fear of ski lifts, and how I once read an article about how ski lifts were safer than escalators which did me not one bit of good since I’m also scared of escalators. We laughed and talked more. I grew to love my fellow workshop attendees—I admired their blend of creative sensibility with their grounding in botany and science. In fact, on our free day, half of us journeyed into Pau and over lunch we stared around in wonder… how had we known each other for just four days?

A couple that arrived to the workshop together got engaged on the day of our field trip, which certainly added awe and wonder to our connections. Oh, you should have seen the table erupt in cheers when news of the engagement dropped. Sheer magic, I can’t think of it without getting tears in my eyes.

Another moment like this came on the very last day, when I traveled to Toulouse (to meet Keith and Gabe) along with two ladies who live in France and so were on the same train. I loved the extra time with my morning yoga and Wordle buddies, and when I regretfully said goodbye to them at the Toulouse train station, I gestured to the escalators and asked if those would lead me to the station. Their eyes grew large. “Escalators!” They chorused. “Do you want us to ride with you?” No, I assured them, I made it all the way to France on my own, I’m sure I can manage an escalator.

But I digress. I was talking about how we started dressing for dinner. On the night of the exhibition, we leveled up a notch, and I have to say, we all looked pretty fabulous. One of my friends mentioned that she had brought a special dress but because she’d signed up later for the workshop, there weren’t rooms available in the manor, so she was staying in the villa a fifteen minute walk away. We assured her she looked lovely regardless, but just then, Heather appeared at her elbow and I heard her whisper, “I have the car. Let’s go get your dress.”

My eyes smarted with tears. As they smarted again later when Heather sat beside me at dinner and told me how much they enjoyed our working in the house the last few days. She said she was walking behind one of my friends as she sat down to begin her final project (a collection of dried objects, since the heat wilted anything green almost as soon as it was plucked). My friend asked, aloud, “How do you make brown?”

Heather said, “Black and yellow?”

My friend paused. “I don’t have black.”

And Heather said, “Well, I’m out, love.”

At this point in Heather’s retelling, she gestured to my friend’s extraordinary work, all in shades of brown. We sat a bit, Heather and I, in wonder at progress and growth.

I loved this last dinner, when we all sat down together, staff and workshop attenders sharing a table. Or two tables, more accurately. At one point, I went outside for a breath of air. Glancing through the windows I smiled to see faces leaning toward each other, suffused with golden light, laughter drifting out into the gathering evening air. It hit me, I haven’t felt like this since the last night of sleep away camp. When you know that the next day, the bubble will burst and all of this will be but a memory.

It’s so rare that as adults we’re thrown together with people we don’t know, without our usual landmarks of a shared town, or career, or mutual friends. What a delight to make friends from strangers over discussing the relative merits of hot press and cold press paper. How breathtaking to have, as part of our exhibition, discussion of language as we tried to describe process and botany in English, French, and German.

So now I look back at that message I sent Lara where I suspected that saying yes was the most revelatory act of signing up with some degree of chucking at my naïveté. I shake my head in wonder at my surety that being awful at something would be just fine, high hilarity even. I little knew the internal boundaries I’d have to push. Nor did I know what would lie beneath, the strength and courage and desire to connect that time and the pandemic had made me forget.

I am a beginner again. But even as a beginner with little-to-no raw talent, I find myself sketching verbena from memory while waiting for a plane. I stop on park benches to draw leaves. I’ve turned the “correspondence desk” I never use into an art desk, where I draw and paint for an hour or so most days, AirPod in my ear, my mind stilled as I find a line to follow. I put Lara’s Instagram Live drawing sessions in my calendar so I can say hi to my Clos Mirabel pals while learning something new about how to draw light and shadow. I planted lemon verbena in my garden. I give space to a new part of me, a part that loves the feeling of falling into that slipstream.

And once again I learn that beginning, even in a fumbling way, releases a wellspring.

Tell me about your experience wading into unfamiliar water, a time when you became a beginner again. Upon reflection, I think this is why I love stories of people moving to new countries. Those are times when are defenses are emptied and we start from scratch. Also, please share you experience in the Pyrénées! I want to go back and would love ideas of where to visit. As ever, please use the buttons below to share this post with your friends! And if you want more content like this, click here to sign up for my newsletter. As a perk for signing up, you’ll get a free novella set in Italy!

Around the World

Beginning Again: Painting in the Pyrenees

Michelle Damiani

Rumors. Romance. And more than a little espresso.

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