Marc Dalessio

My wife and I will be having an exhibition in Château de la Treyne on the Dordogne river, in the Lot region of France this coming July.

All of the small paintings were painted on site last summer, when we had an opening in the lockdowns here in Europe. The larger paintings were painted in the studio this winter, either finished from plein air starts, or enlarged from sketches done in the field.

It’s a stunningly beautiful area, and this is the second summer we have spent painting there. We are normally based near Domme, as we work with the V&A Gallery in Sarlat-la-Canéda, but for this trip we worked much more to the east, to try to paint areas closer to the Chateau.

The castle itself is a spectacular property and we received a very warm welcome from the wonderful owners.

One thing I really love about the Dordogne is how clean the water is. The areas where we were painting were full of water crowfoot, with bees pollinating the flowers that sit just out of the water. And it’s great to see such a large river so teeming with fish and frogs.

Above are all the larger pieces fresh from the studio. Below are all of the smaller, plein air work from the summer. The first group are the ones I used as reference for the studio paintings.