The Times

"HOW would you like to learn to paint?” the e-mail flashed. For five years during my degree course in fine art, when installation was fashionable and painting passé, I’d longed to hear those words. Now, years after I’d given up the desire to be an artist, did I still want to learn?

But who could resist a week in an 18th-century stone farmhouse in La Colle sur Loup, a pretty village in the south of France, renowned for its antiques markets and where the artist Yves Klein once lived? So, after three years of artistic inactivity, heightened by a fear of my own daubs and technical inability, I joined a group of four Danes and one American girl to learn oil, acrylic and watercolour painting and charcoal drawing. From scratch.

Mitch Waite, our course organiser and tutor, joined us for the first of many delicious meals of the week, in the dining room filled with his striking canvases of a Scandinavian shipyard, in charcoal and paint. I was thrilled at the prospect of being taught by someone whose work I actually admired — rather than those advertised by artists whose work I couldn’t bear to look at, let alone aspire to.

After a good night’s sleep in the Chagall bedroom, decorated in white, yellow and terracotta, I joined the group in the studio. Mitch bounded in, full of energy and confidence, describing the programme for the week ahead and asking us to explain what we wanted from the course.

Like anonymous alcoholics we each took the floor. Anne wanted to learn oils; Tobias to paint people; others to learn anything from scratch and I, to learn watercolour skills — apparently one of the hardest media to master.

Mitch’s enthusiasm for our hopes and desires was matched by his lightning speed with a stick of charcoal. With a swift flick of the wrist he outlined shapes on paper, explaining why the picture’s focus is vital. “Spend a lot of time deciding what to paint: every other decision you make is based on that. This is an academic discipline: we’re exercising our ability to see, not to imagine.”

Spreading our easels across the terrace and the gardens, under the grey, thunderous sky (not what we expected of the Côte d’Azur), we framed what we saw with our hands, moving finger-frames forwards and backwards like zoom lenses, which felt — and looked — pretty silly.

Positioning the splendid 12th-century abbey ahead of me on my sheet of paper was impossible. Mitch sketched in lines for size and position: “Learning to draw well is learning to see flat, two-dimensional shapes,” he explained.

In oil painting we made tonal studies using burnt umber and raw sienna. The results were far from Constable-esque, but we were grasping the skills of differentiating between tone, colour and light in our paintings.

22 January 2005

Days of concentration and painting are surprisingly exhausting, and the wholesome three and four-course lunches and dinners, with as much wine, tea or coffee as you like, were vital. Mitch highlighted the importance of removing everyday pressures. “Our formula is that there’s nothing to think about. If you think about hotels, food and transport it’s stressful already. We want our people to have nothing in the way.”

Tackling the wonderful world of colour the next day, we used primaries mixed with white to create the colours we saw before us. Grey featured heavily, but as Vermeer’s maid noticed in Girl With A Pearl Earring, grey clouds don’t consist of black and white, but yellow, blue and pink too.

Mitch talked as he painted: “Oil painting is a difficult and demanding thing and if you’re struggling with your colours, then you’re in trouble.” As he splodged shapes and sky tones on to paper, his squares and blobs became trees, buildings and clouds.

By dinner time we were in high spirits; somehow we had reverted to kindergarten. It was comforting not having news of the outside world, and playing, eating, drinking and chatting with a convivial group of people: like siblings sharing the pain of learning — but without any of the rivalry.

Over the next few days we got to grips with perspective and practised life-drawing using a model; we watched Mitch’s watercolours demonstration in awe, as perfectly angled architecture sprung up and people came to life, then we voted for a venue for our first painting field trip.

There were so many picturesque places near by to choose from: the pretty medieval village of Haut de Cagnes; Saint Paul de Vence; the port of Saint Laurent du Var; or the one we opted for, Vence, and the Chapelle du Rosaire — the masterpiece created by Henri Matisse in the final years of his life, and where we attempted to create ours (on easels, in public).

Luckily, Mitch’s teaching method is as much about thinking what you are doing, facing your fears and taking risks, as learning to paint.

Painting portraits that afternoon, we started to have fun. After a week of discipline and technique it was great to be encouraged to mess around with paint; knowing how to mix the right colours, but choosing to paint purple shadows and orange cheekbones if we fancied.

Looking around the class at the end of the week I noticed that we’d all succeeded at something. Karin’s final acrylic was as good as any on sale in the galleries of Saint Paul; Tobias’s portrait of Maria was totally lifelike; Sonya’s painting of Karin captured her lively spirit; Maria’s acrylic of houses and palms was strong and vibrant; and Anne’s watercolour of Vencoise houses could have been done by a Royal Academician.

And me? Well, I realised I’d made the right choice in giving up the idea that my creative skills lay in painting, but I have to say that my charcoal sketch of the life model was a damn fine one — so maybe people, rather than landscapes, are where my talent lies.

But most important, we’d all learnt the skills to get out there and paint, in the knowledge that it’s only fear holding us back from doing whatever we put our mind to. And if that’s not one of life’s greatest lessons, then my name is Leonardo da Vinci.

22 January 2005