Honfleur Yacht Basin

Honfleur 

The Normandy Adventure

Honfleur - teeming with tourists - Eric Satie and Boudin museum - Deauville, a hop away!

Eight of us painted around the yacht basin one morning.  It was a good experience for my students.  Somehow we managed to smuggle our oil paints and french easels through customs.  This was the baptism of on location painting for most of them. 

Honfleur is a true tourist town - as we set up and became focused on the task at hand (two hours for each painting) the babble of languages became a blur - Onlookers gathered behind us - obviously discussing our selection of composition and execution, the gift to us was we didn't understand Swedish, Norwegian, German or Italian - (didn't hear a lot of French spoken that morning) so we were not distracted by the comments. 

To be in such charming surroundings, to be able to go into that altered state and stay there for hours surrounded by a churning crowd of watchers - the ability to shut the world out and work - that was the lesson this day!  Not to create a piece of art, but to learn how to create and banish stage fright!