If you have never visited Transylvania — that beautiful corner of Romania — it comes very highly recommended. There is something truly wonderful about wandering through such extraordinary meadows, surrounded by wild plants, among the lovely old Saxon villages scattered across the landscape. Copșa Mare is one of them, and I am very glad to have had the chance to be there.
I was drawn back to the meadows of Transylvania because the dear James and Rachel de Candole kindly invited me to organise a masterclass at their property. James and Rachel are among the founding subscribers to the Transylvania Florilegium — which was my original reason for coming to this region. Having first visited in 2015 to paint wild plants for the Florilegium, I found myself here again, this time to share those wild plants as the subject of a teaching course.
James and Rachel have been living in Copșa Mare for many years, together with their two children, one cat, two dogs and five horses — two of which seemed quite enormous to me. When they became founding subscribers to the Transylvania Florilegium, they also conceived the idea of organising a series of masterclasses to draw greater attention to the flora of Transylvania. I was the first tutor in the series.
These masterclasses are limited to four participants, and I think that intimacy is precisely what makes them a true masterclass. In my group were Helen Cousins and Jackie Tilston from the UK, Johanna Eemgard from Sweden, and Jennifer Duval Smith from New Zealand. I could not have asked for a more brilliant group of people to paint alongside.
There is something genuinely wonderful about walking out into the meadows to find your own specimen to paint, and I believe it is one of the most important steps in mastering botanical illustration — choosing your subject, protecting it, and preparing your sketches before it begins to fade. We encountered a great many plants during our time there, and thanks to Johanna, who had an impressive knowledge of species identification, we were able to name much of what we found. Of course, we couldn't paint everything that excited us, and so we selected just a few to work on — among them a beautiful orchid, Orchis militaris, which proved to be quite a challenge. The class was wonderful throughout, and our studio — the "pod" — was simply fabulous.
I won't say anything about Rachel's delicious cooking or the excellent wine that James made sure was always in generous supply. That is something you must experience for yourself.
This was the first masterclass in what will be an ongoing series, with some remarkable tutors from around the world to follow:
Anita Walsmit Sachs — September 2019 Julia Trickey — October 2019 Lara Call Gastinger — November 2019 Margareta Pertl — May 2020 Christabel King — June 2020 Mary Dillon — late June 2020 Elaine Searle — September 2020
And of course, I will be returning to teach again too.
To find out more about these classes, visit podart.space — and for a sense of the setting itself, copsamare.life is well worth a look.
