STORY OF A PAINTING, THE STORY OF “PILGRIMAGE”

It was mid-June 2024, half-way into my Residency at Chateau d’Orquevaux Artist & Writers Residency. While my initial inclination was to stay in my studio painting, the Residency Assistant, Margot was taking a small group of artists for a hike to find a statue of the Virgin Mary, La Vierge de Humberville.

It wasn’t a long hike, about two miles to the next village over, Humberville, and the road followed the waters of La Manoise past farming fields with mooing white Charolais cows, and brown cows that may have been Froment du Leon, and beside an orchard close to Humberville, there were black and white Holstein dairy cows lounging about. Another farm had groups of puffy, black-faced sheep tending to tall grass beneath shaded trees, , and along the entire routem, we passed many of my landscape’s trees, those tall Poplars, their branches encumbered by clumps of Mistletoe.

The road to Humberville, À Fleuret/D16 was lined with old stone walls surrounding stuccoed farmhouses, and moss-covered fence posts strung with barbed wire. Occasionally a car or truck would pass us by on the one lane pavement, leading our small group of wanderers to stray to the side in the dewy wet grass.

The village of Humberville was as quiet as Orquevaux and similarly felt as though you were walking through an old photograph, and, other than the occasional parked car, it was void of any modernity; the stone and stucco buildings scarred by the world wars that once rumbled through its streets.

From the village, we hiked up into the hillside, single file through the bright green grass, along a forgotten path and into the thick forest looking out on the farms below. And along this path I picked a small bouquet of wildflowers, thinking I would leave it as an offering. As it was, we never found La Vierge de Humberville, though the map said it was there. I turned at the top of the forgotten path, looking out at the beautiful rural landscape, its patchwork of soils and pastures stretching to a hazy horizon beneath an azure sky. And, as I am prone to do, captured an image, taking as much of the view as I could from one angled corner to the other.

I’m going to paint this, (I thought to myself)…And, I’m going to paint it BIG.