An objet trouvé, as you well know, is something found by an artist and displayed with no, or minimal, alteration, as a work of art.
Well, we don’t count ourselves as artists like our wonderful painting tutors and their talented students, our guests on our creative courses, but there are objets trouvés scattered about the mill to add further sources of inspiration for painting, along with the wonderful buildings and gardens and the spectacular scenery around the Watermill.
Like the massive stones used in the old days to grind the olives to a paste before they were squeezed for their oil. And the wonderful demijohns, green bottle-glass containers in raffia baskets, once used by every household in the area for making wine. (Most people now use stainless steel vats and throw away these beautiful artefacts, which our gardener Flavio Terenzoni collects and brings to the mill.) They are a great artistic attraction, though their shape is quite difficult to capture.
An olive crusher stone and a handful of demijohns were the subject of the painting above by tutor Randy Hale early on in his week with us, immortalising our objets trouvés. Why not come and see them for yourself? There are details of this year’s – and next year’s – creative courses at the Watermill on our website, which you can see by clicking here.
Here’s a picture of the same scene by Watermill guest Abigail Hunt: