The Tramizal Diary - Midi-Pyrénées

The Tramizal Diary is artist Catherine Stock’s blog where she manages to entertain with tales from her life teaching art, living the life in South West France and generally exploring what sounds to me, to be a very interesting part of France.

As Catherine explains… “I gave up New York in early 2005 to see if I could live happily year round in a small village in southwest France. I hoped, by getting away from the constant bombardment of big city distractions, to be able to focus on my own creative work. I see this blog as a bit of a record of this time in my life.”

The painting courses that Catherine runs are detailed at this website… http://catherinestock.com from where I gleaned these details…” Rignac is a working village with small farms: cows and sheep clog the roads on their way to grazing each morning and evening. The landscape of Quercy is green with gently rolling hills- perfect for hiking and bicycling. It is a lovely area for watercolorists from daubers to professionals. “

Some of the articles that stand out for me are… Curtain of wisteria, mushrooms and fresh eggs welcome me home, (I like the mushroom bits!) and  The Day we danced in Underpants (which turned out to be not quite as much of an adult nature as I expected.)

There are also a lot of posts about Catherine’s dog Sam (who keeps going walkabouts.)

Although Catherine has illustrated many books, the following are details of one that she has written…

A Spree in Paree “How are you gonna’ keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?” The answer to that question is you’re not, at least in the case of Monsieur Monmouton’s live stock. Monsieur Monmouton is a farmer, and the proud owner of almost a dozen silly sheep, five inquiring geese, three avaricious goats, four almost contented cows, numerous pigeons, two plus size pigs, nine clucking chickens, a proud rooster, and one very put upon dog. During the summer people would often flee Paris to picnic or camp in the farmer’s pleasant fields. During the evenings some of his visitors would tell him about life in Paris, and when they left they invited him to visit them. Author/illustrator Stock pairs her story with glowing watercolor illustrations that fill the pages of this unlikely, uproarious adventure.

More information

I like this blog (but then I like artists blogs).  And any blog that has an article about Coulemelles is all right by me!

All the best

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