Day 7

Inspiration

Where does inspiration come from?

IN MY STUDIO

When art imitates life.

Ask ten artists and you’ll get ten answers. For some it’s poetry. For others, it’s people, music, architecture, memory. For me, it’s always been nature. The quiet kind. The unassuming kind. The texture of a petal, the flicker of sunlight through leaves, the gentle tangle of wildflowers growing where no one told them they couldn’t.

Here at Château Orquevaux, it’s everywhere.

Every walk around the grounds is a study in colour, movement, and light. The gardens are generous, full of untamed life. I’ve wandered down dirt tracks and through meadows, and come back to the studio with arms full of inspiration — wild bouquets of daisies, aquilegias, ornamental grasses, buttercups, and Queen Anne’s lace. Some blooms I don’t even know the names of — and somehow that makes them even more magical.

My studio is slowly filling with them. Little glass jars and water cups pressed into service as makeshift vases. Each arrangement a tiny still life waiting to be interpreted in oil.

The floral-scapes I’m working on now are directly informed by what I see and feel here. I’m not just painting flowers — I’m painting atmosphere, memory, the feeling of standing in a sun-dappled field or wandering through an overgrown garden with nowhere else to be.

There’s a particular quality to the light in France that artists always talk about. Now I understand why. It’s softer here — diffused and blue-toned — without the stark harshness of the Australian sun. That gentleness changes everything. The way colours read and the way shadows fall.

I’m drinking it all in. And I’m painting as fast as my hand will allow.

Inspiration may look different for each of us, but we know it when we feel it — that little spark that says, “Pay attention. This is something worth remembering.”

Today, I’m remembering in paint.

Until tomorrow…

Robyn xx