Summer of Art 25: Europe Edition

This August I carved out time to do what I love most (apart from painting in the studio): getting out into the world to see art. Travelling through Paris, Bilbao, Monte Carlo and Mougins, I found myself soaking up exhibitions that left me buzzing with ideas, emotions, and an ever-expanding sense of what art can do.

It was a whirlwind of colour, ideas, and inspiration - the kind of trip that fills your sketchbooks (and your heart) for months to come. I thought I’d share a few highlights from the exhibitions and encounters that stayed with me most.

Paris - Hockney, crowds and e bikes

Hockney needs no introduction, but nothing quite prepares you for seeing his work on this scale. A huge retrospective filled room after room, but two moments really stayed with me: his playful sprinkler painting - full of movement, joy, and the rhythm of everyday life - and his moonlight works, which glowed with quiet magic and tenderness. They felt like two sides of the same coin: the exuberance of the day and the stillness of the night.

Together, they captured the range of Hockney’s lifelong curiosity about looking and seeing. I was captivated by the way he sees and explains simple things - his ability to paint water blows me away every time. and the moonlight pieces - mostly prints of pieces made on his ipad, because, who'd want to try to mix paint in low light? - had enough glow to illuminate the room.

While in Paris, we also stumbled upon the legendary Sennelier art shop on the Left Bank. The upstairs landing was covered with scraps of white paper - little test notes left behind by visitors trying out pens and inks. Every wall and even the ceiling had become an impromptu archive of mark-making, a beautiful layering of anonymous creativity. I could have spent all day in there - and a lot of euros!

We mooched along the left bank to the Musée d’Orsay, where I hadn't been for quite a few years. The galleries were crowded with people wanting to feast their eyes in the Impressionist rooms. It was quite bonkers how busy it was and I became intrigued by how some paintings are like super stars and everyone wants a peek and a photo. I'm always fascinated how we take photos of paintings because there isn't time - or we don't allow ourselves or each other the time - to just look at them. In fact I started photographing the people taking photos - which is a bad habit of mine.

I was stopped in my tracks by a handful of works - especially the luminous, dreamlike paintings of Odilon Redon, which reminded me how colour and symbol can transport us into other worlds.

We hired ebikes and braved the Arc de Triomphe, grabbed ice creams in the cool of the Jardin de Luxombourg and explored the Place Vendome which holds a special memory for me - visiting Paris for the first time aged 11 with my Mum. After an early Sunday morning pop-in to the recently reopened, resplendent Notre Dame, and a fantastic and inspiring supper with a dear friend it was time to get the fast train to Spain for the next leg of our August Art Adventure.

Bilbao: Helen Frankenthaler & Guggenheim

The Guggenheim itself was unforgettable. The building is of course an artwork in its own right, but arriving for our first view of is at sunset was exceptional timing.

What floored me next were the monumental sculptures inside. Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses - walking through those vast spirals of steel was like moving inside sound waves or memory itself. Their sheer scale was overwhelming in the best way. The monumental sculptural installations demanded that you not only look but walk, listen, and feel your way through them. It felt immersive, as though you were part of the work. All the colours and textures were brought to life even more to with the sun shining through the skylights, illuminating the surfaces and creating contrasts and shadows.

The Helen Frankenthaler exhibition offered a quieter intimacy but was an equally nourishing experience - a reminder of how abstraction can hold both intimacy and expansiveness. Her washes of colour felt both delicate and confident, like breath caught in pigment.

Other time in Bilbao was spent mooching and enjoy the delicacies, but the highlights were sketching, in a shady park and on roof top and in the middle of a rain storm.

Monte Carlo - Couleurs

With the Centre Pompidou in Paris now closed for five years of refurbishment, a selection of its treasures travelled south to the Grimaldi Forum for the exhibition Couleurs. This show explored colour as experience rather than simply pigment on canvas. Entire rooms were devoted to single hues, each one painted floor to ceiling in its chosen shade and accompanied by sound and scent designed to evoke that colour’s mood. Moving through them was like stepping inside colour itself - a synaesthetic journey that made the familiar strange and visceral again. I, of course, got busy taking colour inspiration photos. It's just a shame not to be able to record all the sound and smell memories too.

It felt almost designed for someone obsessed with the memory / colour connection like me. This was a feast for the senses that hit all my buttons: vibrant, saturated, unapologetic. It was like standing inside the essence of colour itself. I came out with my eyes and mind fizzing.

FAMM - Mougins

One of the most moving discoveries on this trip was FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum), which opened in June 2024. Housed in the former MACM building, it is Europe’s first private museum dedicated entirely to women artists.

Spread across four floors, the collection brings together almost a hundred works by nearly ninety female artists, spanning from Impressionism to the present. Names like Frida Kahlo, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner and Tracey Emin sit side by side, offering a sweeping and affirming narrative of women’s contribution to art history.

What struck me most was not just the calibre of the work, but the clarity of intention: to address a gap that has too long existed in the cultural landscape. FAMM feels both overdue and quietly radical - a permanent space that honours women’s voices and restores them to the centre of the story.

Next door to the museum is a gorgeous boutique where I fell in love with a jacket that reminded me of Redon's paintings I'd seen in Paris and Frankenthaler's paintings in Bilbao. I had to have it - until I saw the price tag. Having just lost my purse in a freak 'had it one minute - not the next' incident, I didn't even have the sneaky credit card handy to help me resist temptation. The one that got away!

A Personal Interlude

Being in the south of France also coincided with a big family moment - my eldest son received his GCSE results (and passed them all 🎉). We celebrated in suitably dramatic fashion: hiring a skippered boat from Antibes to Cannes to snorkel. What should have been a blissful swim quickly turned into another stormy adventure - soaked to the skin, slightly terrified, but also mesmerised by extraordinary cloud formations.

In the chaos, my watercolours (safely tucked under a seat with the lid firmly on) somehow still got flooded - proof that storms have a way of getting everywhere. Even so, the mix of joy, nerves, weather and sea felt like a fittingly elemental way to mark the milestone.

A Round-Up

Travelling between Paris, Bilbao and the south, from Hockey's life time of recording his experiences, colour-drenched rooms at the Pompidou’s Couleurs exhibition, the intimate power of FAMM in Mougins, and ending with stormy celebrations at sea, I was reminded again of how art and life intermingle - transforming space, memory and experience. These encounters nourish my own practice, feeding into the way I think about colour, identity, and the stories we hold.

Every time I visit the Côte d’Azur, I come home with new plans for an art mini-break I want to run. This time, I’m closer than ever to making it happen. If you’re curious about workshops or retreats in this part of the world, do sign up to my specific workshops mailing list at the bottom of the relevant page on my website - you’ll be the first to know when details are announced.

Lara x