Dear Friend,

I migliori auguri per un felice e creativo anno nuovo.

Our very best wishes for a happy and creative New Year.

Where better to be happy and creative than on one of the world-renowned Watermill courses, in painting, creative writing, knitting and Italian language? We are filling fast, so ‘Book now, to avoid disappointment!’ As ever, you can find details of all our courses below, with links to the appropriate pages on our website.

The biggest news so far this year is how our Watermill guests will stop 40,000 plastic bottles being thrown into the ocean in 2023. We have put together a fantastic deal to offset all our plastic use by collecting 450 kg of ocean-bound plastic from the world's most polluted rivers and waterways and ensure that it is not dumped into the sea. This is equivalent to around 40,000 single-use half-litre bottles! Because of this deal, our creative-course guests will know that they are plastic neutral during their weeks with us. Details below.

Add to that the fact that we had a record year producing electricity from the sun with our hidden array of photovoltaic panels (and avoided 35 tonnes of carbon dioxide production in the process) and you can see you will be even Cooler and Greener than ever before the mill. Come and join us for a week of inspiring tuition, warm hospitality, stunning locations, delicious local food and wine and the convivial company of like-minded people. And help save the planet! Again, there are more details below.

In this month’s newsletter we also have stories on:

• The latest sessions of the Watermill’s popular online interactive painting programme
• Watermill painting memories linger on
• Non-Participating Partners have fun too!
• Painting tutor of the month: Come and pastel passionately with Padgett!
• Elegance, style, Tuscany – join Georgia for a knitting and a Bella Vita week
• Why you will be ‘quite’ inspired by Jo Parfitt’s writing your life stories week
• Why there’s no doubt about ‘no rain’ in Italian.

Happy reading!

The pictures at the top and bottom of this introductory section are (top left) bottles and fish, (picture: Imperial College London); (top right) the new Watermill ocean bottle; (bottom left) an aerial shot of the hidden array of photovoltaic panels on mill roofs, from Grazyna Ostrowska’s drone video; (bottom right) graphical proof of a record year of electricity from the sun.

“Did you get my letter
about going to the Watermill
for the creative course?”

Bring a partner:
there's plenty for them to do

They don’t have to participate in the course, but they will be able to enjoy the wonderful hospitality of the mill and, whenever they want, to come out with you to our beautiful locations.

We also offer a range of Alternative activities for partners on all our courses, as well as a generous £GBP 250 discount if they share a room with you.

Picture: Laura Linney as Abigail and Paul Giamatti as John in the HBO series John Adams

How our Watermill guests will stop 40,000 plastic bottles being thrown into the ocean in 2023

Yes, in a fantastic deal with Ocean Bottle* we’ve created a scheme to collect each year 450 kg of ocean-bound plastic from the world's most polluted rivers and waterways and ensure that it is not dumped into the sea. This is equivalent to around 40,000 single-use half-litre bottles.

What’s more, every time you fill up with water in the special insulated flasks we’ll loan you each week, you’ll also stop another five bottles polluting the oceans. We’ll show you how to do it when you get here.

It’s all part of the Watermill’s endeavour to be even Greener, not only in reducing plastic waste, but also in reducing our carbon emissions. (We already saved more than 35 tonnes of carbon dioxide through making our own electricity from the sun. And this year has been a record for our production of photovoltaic electricity. (See below for details.)

Plastic waste is the scourge of the oceans and their wildlife, and we have made a start in reducing our ‘plastic footprint' by no longer buying water in plastic bottles. Instead, we invested in a clever water dispenser which produces filtered water (at ambient temperature, cold or fizzy) for all our meals and for guests to use in the Ocean Bottles vacuum flasks we loan them during their week with us.

*Ocean Bottle, a British company, works worldwide to bring a ‘people-powered solution to the ocean plastic crisis’. Through the sales of its recyclable insulated bottles, it raises money to pay people to collect plastic in coastal communities where plastic pollution is worst.

Ocean Bottle works with people from all over the world,
wherever plastic pollution is worst, to stop the flow at its worst

Since launching in 2019 Ocean Bottle has prevented more than seven million kg of ocean-bound plastic from reaching our oceans. That’s equivalent to 636 million plastic bottles.

A rough estimate of the amount of plastic used at the Watermill during our creative weeks is around 450 kg, or about 1.8 kg per guest. Working with the Ocean Bottle company, we have done a deal both to buy their bottles and to pay into a scheme to ensure that in total all our plastic use is offset each year. In this way, our creative-course guests will know that they are plastic neutral during their weeks with us.

Currently eight million metric tonnes (8,000 million kg) of plastic winds up in the oceans every year. Our contribution may be a drop in the ocean but it is important nonetheless.

An electric record year for the Cool and Green watermill

(Left) Morning sun on the rose pergola
(Right) You can only really see the photovoltaic panel with a drone shot. Picture: Grazyna Ostrowska

As you may know, more than three years ago, we installed at the Watermill a hidden array of photovoltaic panels on our south-facing roofs, to produce electricity from the sun. In each full year we make more 14,000 kWh, more than enough to make us self-sufficient in electricity, even powering the extensive air-conditioning system that we have in all our rooms, both public rooms like the dining room, sitting room and studio, but also in all our bedrooms and suites.

And just before Christmas there was another red-letter day. As the screenshots from our photovoltaic app (not very clearly, I’m afraid) on 23 December the annual 2022 production was 14,337, topping last year’s production – and there were still half-a-dozen days to go. And, what's more, we have avoided more than 35 tonnes of carbon dioxide production.

We are feeling quite proud even though, again, it is a drop in the ocean (compared with, say, the polluting output of Chinese coal-powered stations). All part of our efforts to make the Watermill Cool and Green.

Rising to the challenge and painting along online with the Watermill maestri Randy and Mike

We are well into the swing of the Watermill’s season of in-line, interactive painting sessions, with our international guests painting along with our two maestri, Randy Hale and Mike Willdridge. We have three more sessions in the next month or so to tell you about, but first let’s look at some of our guests’ wonderful paintings from Mike’s last session, the subject of which was the outdoor skating rink at Somerset House in the heart of London. We must confess that we thought that the plethora of figures moving around the ice were a little daunting, but our international group rose womanfully (and manfully) to the challenge. The montage right of half a dozen of the pictures submitted to our gallery, selected entirely at random, shows how good and varied the paintings were.

Our next session is with Randy, another wintry scene, which he calls Snowbound. Here’s his practice painting:

Randy says: "This is a great exercise in how to work with cool colours, movement and action, and negative space." The latter become most dramatic when dark values push up against them to create obvious contrasts. Randy says: "I designed the overlapping buildings so their rooftops link together becoming a visual bridge of negative shapes to lead our eye through the composition.”

Randy’s online session is on Thursday 5 January 2023, and it starts at 3:30 pm UK time (GMT). Please check what this means in your own time zone. You can sign up by clicking here. Please note that the start time is different from Mike’s.

A fortnight later on Thursday 19 January at 2:30 pm UK time (GMT), it’s Mike’s turn again, with this tranquil early morning scene, of the River Colne near Wivenhoe in the English county of Essex. You can register to join him by clicking here.

Mike says: “The early morning light, flooding its way across the landscape and onto the water and moored boats, seems such a suitable metaphor for a new beginning; for the start of a new year - hence this choice for my first painting of the year”.

He adds: “As with all of our paintings, there’s a challenge in this painting: it’s so atmospheric and so subtle. As I discovered in my practice painting, it’ll be a great exercise in using lots of water and painting much of the composition with a ‘wet-into-wet’ technique. The only piece of equipment that I found useful (and I don’t often use) was a fine water spray bottle.”

Then, on Thursday 2 February, Randy Hale ventures to Italy, to the wonderful thermal spa town of Bagno Vignoni and it starts at the new time of 4pm UK time (GMT). You can sign up by clicking here.

Randy says: "How fun to combine Italian building facades and dark reflective water with steamy mist wafting across the surface! In this ZOOM session we’ll take a look at the southern Tuscany resort town of Bagno Vignoni. While most Italian towns are built around a central square, this community sprang up as a result of the natural hot springs drawing visitors there for centuries. The central spa basin serves as their piazza, fed by the natural hot springs nearby".

He adds: "Our session will include working with some basic perspective as we capture several buildings receding away from the viewer. We’ll simplify backgrounds into a single dark shape to provide value contrast against the stucco-ed facades. The deep dark depths of the central spa pool pick up subtle reflections of warm stucco, interrupted by ripples across the water. Some backwash, a bit of tissue blotting, and softening with a brush produce an impressive bit of mist rising off the warm water’s surface. Some speak Italian…we’ll paint Italian!"

There will be more Watermill online interactive sessions to come, but we will tell you more about those in next month’s newsletter. You can keep up-to-date at all our Watermill online, interactive sessions, by clicking here.  

Watermill memories linger on

We’ve always said that the inspiring effects of a Watermill creative course (especially painting) linger on well after the week you spend with us. The painters in particular often create pictures at home, based on sketches and photographs, many months after the return. Carrie Rodgers-O’Neal is one of them and she sent a lovely picture above of our vine verandah in full bloom. She writes: “After my plein air watercolor workshop at the mill , I went home and did this studio oil inspired by your grape arbor!”

Thank you for sharing that with us, Carrie – and, like Carrie, why don’t you join us in 2023 and make your own long-term memories. There are details of all our 2023 creative courses below.

Non-Participating Partners have fun too!

Left: Vernazza, Cinque Terre
Right: This Lucca square echoes the shape of the old Roman amphitheatre

We ran this story in our earlier newsletters, but it’s as true now as it was then, so we make no excuse for reminding you again that non-participating partners can have a wonderful time, as well.

While his wife Alison was painting with Grahame Booth on his creative week last month, Greg Cokorinos enjoyed a breath-taking walk, taking in three villages of the beautiful Cinque Terre, with magnificent views over the Mediterranean... The day before both of them had gone to the quintessential Italian city of Lucca on the Watermill’s Wednesday excursion...

The thousand-year-old vineyard
in the hilltop village of
Monte dei Bianchi

A couple of weeks earlier, non-painting partner Bill Durias enjoyed swapping wine-making lore with a local vineyard owner, while the painting group captured the magnificent mountains of the Apuan Alps with their brushes...

Yes, Watermill creative course guests often bring their partners on their week-long courses at the mill. We call them NPPs, Non-Participating Partners, spouses or friends who come with the guests on our creative courses, but do not participate in the painting, writing, knitting or Italian language sessions during the week.

We have plenty of optional alternatives for them, including fishing and tennis, vineyard visits and clifftop excursions, enigmatic statues in the mediaeval castles... you can find out more by clicking here.

It’s a hard life being an NPP!

But many of our NPP’s prefer simply to go out with their partners to our stunning locations and enjoy the wonderful scenery. Or, perhaps like Sandy, Peter and Steve(below), NPPs on Ali Hargreaves’ painting course last year, soak up some sun in the Watermill’s walled garden, enjoying a good book, before joining their partners for lunch at the Watermill or in a charming local restaurant.

Come and find out for yourself. The sun-lounger cushions await! There’s more about everything on the Watermill website. Just click here.