Barbara Macfarlane Map Walks

Walking in the Summer Rain up to Col d'Oure, in the artist's studio

In the artist's studio

Paths down from Col de Bedon, in the artist's studio

'The paintings are all about very particular walks in the Baronnies hills in southern France.

The landscape is very dramatic with high blue mountains in the distance, rocky hills with wild thyme, deep gorges and a river which in the summer is gentle, cold and green, in the winter it’s a torrent of clay coloured water so fast you stand well back.

There are small fields cut into the hillsides of fruit trees which are stark shapes in the winter and have pink and white blossom in the spring. Also fields with neat lines of Lavender.

The weather changes from warm, crisp sunshine to electric thunderstorms where you can’t see across the valley. It’s dramatic when the black clouds roll in and the light on the hillsides changes into blackness.

This landscape is one I can inhabit in my thoughts and it is this landscapes that I am painting. Instead of painting a landscape of what I see, each painting is a memory of a very particular walk. I paint them in the form of a map, they are of walks'

- Barbara Macfarlane

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