From the Chateau

 

"Corner of the Salon"

Oil on Linen Panel, 12 x 9 inches

(c) Lesley Powell 2026

Have you ever dreamed of living in a French chateau?  Well, I got to live the dream for one short week this summer.  I took part in a painting workshop at Chateau de Puy Vidal, in the Charente region of France.  

The Chateau is a true treasure. Its interior spaces are very architecturally pleasing, and are furnished with antique tapestries, art and period furniture.  And wonder of wonders, we were allowed to paint inside the Chateau!  It's very rare to be able to paint inside of a historic interior, so I made the most of it. 

"Hearthside"

Oil on Canvas Panel, 9.5 x 7 inches

(c) Lesley Powell 2026

I loved the giant hearth in the Renaissance dining room (above).  It conjures up storybook images of noblemen in fitted doublets and leather boots, roasting their game in the fireplace.  

"Garden Maze"

Oil on Linen, Mounted on Panel, 9.5 x 8 inches

(c) Lesley Powell 2026

The grounds were just as beautiful as the interiors.  They included an amazing evergreen maze, peopled by lovely statuary.  And a series of garden rooms that just begged to be painted.  Truly, one could spend months and months here, and never run out of things to paint.  Maybe I'll get to return one day...

If you'd like to see the complete Chateau Collection of paintings, you can just click here.

Can You Say "Schjerfbeck"?

"Self-Portrait, 1912"

Oil on Canvas, 43.5 x 42 cm

Helene schjerfbeck, 1912

Though she is relatively unknown in the United States, I have admired the work of Helene Schjerfbeck for years.  Imagine my excitement when I learned that the Metropolitan Museum was mounting the first ever retrospective in the US devoted to her work. Cause for a trip to New York!  And the exhibit did not disappoint. It's one thing to look at reproductions in a book, but quite another to see the paintings in person. 

"Still-life in Green"
Oil on Canvas, 33.5 x 50 cm.
Helene Schjerfbeck, 1930

The difference is especially notable with a painter like Schjerfbeck, whose work involves a lot of textural manipulation.  Schjerfbeck chose different textures of canvas for different effects. She did a lot of back-and-forth work, putting down paint and then scraping it off.  The result is a painting that is "alive", and that shows the hand of the artist and the process of developing the painting.  In many cases (see above) the raw canvas is left showing through and is incorporated into the motif.

"Red Apples"
Oil on Canvas, 40.5 x 40.5 cm
Helene Schjerfbeck, 1915

Perhaps my favorite painting was the one just below, "Fragment".  As the wall copy at the Met notes, Schjerfbeck would have seen Renaissance frescoes in Italy a few years before making this painting, and the abraded surface calls to mind the deterioration of ancient frescoes wrought by time.  Besides the surface quality, I love the tenderness of this image, so vulnerable. In person, it practically glows.

"Fragment"

Oil on Canvas, 31.5 x 34 cm

Helene Schjerfbeck, 1904

It was a treat to see Schjerfbeck's minimalism, and elimination of details. She said so much with so little. Schjerfbeck wrote to a friend, "Let us avoid executing so precisely and exactly that our work closes the way instead of opening it. Let us IMPLY."  A woman after my own heart.

"At Home (Mother Sewing)"

Oil on Canvas, 86.5 x 62.3 cm

Helene Schjerfbeck, 1903

The exhibit at the Met closed on April 5, 2026, but you can still get the catalog on Amazon here.  Well worth a look!  I like the catalog from the Met exhibit, but even better (in my opinion) is the catalog from the Schjerfbeck exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2019.  It focuses more on an examination of her process, and it's available on Amazon also.  Happy reading!

Living Vuillard

 

If you've been reading the blog for a while, you know that I am a lover of Edouard Vuillard and the Nabis.  So you may not be surprised to learn that I had a gestalt "Vuillard moment" this week.

I was working on the needlework project pictured above, and as I bent over my yarn and needle, I felt just like a figure in a Vuillard painting.  Vuillard's mother was a seamstress (a corset maker, to be exact), and images of women sewing appear often in his work. In fact, I have studied some of his paintings by doing transcriptions of them (one shown below).  

"Woman in a Striped Dress", Edouard Vuillard, 1895

And then another connection dawned:  the needlepoint canvas I was working on was oddly reminiscent of the first Vuillard painting I ever saw, at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., "Woman in a Striped Dress".  Do you see the connection??  I guess all roads lead to Vuillard.

And in current events, the Skarstedt Gallery in New York is mounting a Vuillard exhibit next month.  The focus will be on his early interiors--some of my favorites. I hope to see the exhibit and garner new inspiration.  Stay tuned!