My friends Laurie and Blair Pessemier are both painters and also give en plein air painting classes. They used to live in Paris, and they now live in Italy, and still give en plein air classes in the Italian countryside about 40 minutes from Bologna.
They received an art residency for a new art foundation La Maison de Simon, run by Alon, Betsy and Sarah Kasha, who live in Paris but have a country home in Fontaine Sous Jouy, Normandy, where the foundation is also located. The newly finished complex has six artists’ studios (including a ceramics studio), an apartment with two bedrooms, a professional kitchen, a living and dining area, a library, a balcony, and an outdoor gallery space. Laurie and Blair are first artists in residence, arriving early in February and staying approximately a month.
I took a day off on Tuesday to visit them. The closest train station is Vernon/Giverny, about 50 minutes from Paris by train. I hadn’t seen Laurie and Blair since October 2021, so we hugged warmly when they picked me up at the station. The scenic drive to the house and atelier was about a 25-minute and filled with meadows of green grass, cows grazing, and tall, bare trees.
The atelier and apartment, on three levels, was well appointed with crisp white walls, lots of windows and skylights with lovely, natural light pouring through, a large open kitchen with an impressive, gas stove, and decorated mostly in a contemporary style, with a few touches of whimsy, crafts, and artworks.
The studio on the top floor was filled with paintings that were barely dry by Laurie and Blair. Laurie has suddenly become obsessed with Marie Antoinette, and there was an unfinished painting of her hanging on a wood beam.
Laurie made a hearty lunch of choucroute with sauerkraut she had whipped up that morning and we sat around the long wood table catching up from the last year and a half.
It was a lovely, sunny afternoon and we took a long walk on the country lanes near the house. It was one of those pre-spring days where the trees and flowers were just about to burst their blooms but not quite yet. We admired the grassy marshes, the gleaming brooks and creeks with mallards and ducks floating on them, the striking trees, the ancient, petrified wood clumps looking like sculptures, and Normandy style houses with their weather-beaten tiled and thatched roofs and ancient wood beams. I haven’t been out to the countryside in ages and deeply breathing in the truly fresh and crisp air was a welcome relief to my lungs.
Blair drove me back to the station at about 5:30pm and I caught the 6pm train back to Paris, still savoring my perfect day in the country with close friends.
Laurie & Blair's website http://artnotesparis.blogspot.com/
Instagram @maisonsimon.art
Berlino the dog
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