Watercolor Retreat in France: 9 Days at Perigord Retreats (Review)

Hello there! I’m finally sitting down to share my retreat in southern France — a trip I had no real intention of taking when the year started, and one that ended up shifting how I think about painting in ways I’m still working through.

Here’s the short version: I’d been juggling a lot — work, kids, the usual — and a nine-day trip abroad was exactly the kind of thing I’d normally talk myself out of. Then I saw one final spot open at a watercolor retreat with Renee Walden, hosted by Perigord Retreats in the Gourdon area of southern France. The dates worked. The property looked like a daydream. I booked it before I could overthink it (which is unusual 😅).

I’m so glad I did.

This retreat ended up being the trip where I stopped being a student following demos and started being a painter who paints what calls to her — and I want to share everything I learned, because if you’re considering a watercolor retreat in France (or really any art retreat), I think this is what you’d want to know going in.

Getting there: Paris, jet lag, and meeting strangers who became friends

I flew into Paris from the US two days before the retreat started — a practice I’ve deployed since my second painting trip. I cannot recommend it enough!

Two days isn’t a lot. It’s not a Paris vacation. But it’s enough to sleep off the worst of the jet lag, get your body onto local time, and arrive at the retreat actually ready to paint instead of half-conscious for the first three days. I have a whole jet-lag system now (early morning sunlight, no naps the first day, and as much walking as I can manage), and it has saved me on every painting trip since.

In Paris, I met up with three other women from the retreat — none of us had met before! We wandered Notre Dame, found dinner at Cafe de Flore, and ended up sitting in a quiet medieval garden together in companionable silence. By the time we boarded the train south to Gourdon, the four of us already felt like old friends.

Arriving at Perigord Retreats

The property sits in the French countryside, in a tiny, tiny village — the kind of place where you could miss it entirely if you blinked. Rolling green hills in every direction, cottages with stunning gardens, and farms dotted with sheep and cattle. It was delightful and remote and quiet.

The home itself is actually several buildings. The main house has a porch and a sunroom (where we ate most of our meals), and several bedrooms inside. The building right next to it houses the studio, an enclosed pool, and a few more rooms (where I stayed). The whole layout had this lovely sense of “spread out but together” — you could disappear into the studio for hours, or drift onto the porch for breakfast, or take yourself to the pool, or go for an afternoon nap, all without leaving the property.

Out front was a gorgeous grove of old trees (live oaks, maybe? I’m not great with trees — but they were beautiful). Out back, a lush field of lavender, and lucky us — it was in full bloom when we visited! The whole property was framed with flowers; everywhere I turned was something else worth painting.

Harrison and Katel welcomed us like family — along with their toddler son, who I think charmed every single one of us 💛. It honestly felt like coming home, even though I’d never been there before. I think that’s part of what made the retreat work the way it did. The coziness and warmth of the hosts (and the food!) is unmatched, even across all of my many trips.

A note about the food, while I’m thinking about it. Katel and her team made some of the most incredible meals I’ve ever had. I’m not exaggerating! Dishes I’d never have thought to try were genuinely life-changing. Every meal felt like it had been considered down to the smallest detail. (The yogurt at breakfast was its own event, but more on that in a minute 😅.)

By the end of the first evening, I’d already started to settle into what would become the rhythm of every day at Perigord.

The Rhythm of a Day

The shape of each day at Perigord was perfect. In spite of having 10 strangers with their own routines being shuttled about, each day flowed smoothly — and I suspect it’s thanks to how the daily schedules are designed.

Day by Day: Where We Painted

We painted at eight different locations over the retreat. I understand each visit to Perigord is different; there are a number of different locations, activities, and things to do, and each day Harrison and the creative leader of the group select which are the right fit for the group.

Day 1: Cahors

We started at the market in Cahors, then painted at its iconic medieval bridge, the Pont Valentré. It was brutally hot — like, sweating-through-everything hot. I remember thinking, “this is fine, this is the romance of plein air painting!” 😂 It was, mostly, fine.

Day 2: Luzech

Not the town itself, but a tiny old churchyard nearby, with rolling vineyards stretching out below. This is the day my company went public — more on that in a minute!

Day 3: Kayaking the Dordogne, ending near Beynac

Kayaking down the Dordogne River, surrounded by limestone cliffs and clifftop castles, ending just before Beynac Castle — where we pulled the kayaks ashore and painted. I genuinely felt like I had paddled into a watercolor. What a fantastic relief from the heat!

Day 4: The lavender fields at home

A “stay at the property” day, painting the lavender field. Everyone scattered across the lawn, all painting roughly the same view — and every single result was completely different. This is when I first noticed it: nobody was painting the same thing, and it had nothing to do with skill level. More on that lesson later in the post!

Day 5: Rocamadour

Rocamadour is a town built vertically into a cliff face, and it is unreasonably beautiful. We spent the day exploring the chapels carved into the cliff, climbing the (many) stairs, and stopping for café breaks whenever the rain came down too heavily.

This is also the dress day. Previous guests raved about a dress shop so much, that many of us stopped by to try things on for ourselves. Several of us bought the same style dress! Some of us bought two! There’s now a group photo of all of us in matching dresses, that I will treasure forever 💛.

Day 6: Jardins des Milandes

A castle and its gardens — formerly the home of Josephine Baker. I explored the castle and chapel before painting in the gardens. The history of the castle itself is fascinating, as is Josephine Baker’s life; both of which you learn about during the tour. Highly recommend this visit!

Day 7: Les Jardins d’Eau

A water garden in the Monet tradition — bridges over lily pads, willows, reflections. I painted the bridge over the lily pads, and made notes (and took a lot of photos!) for what would become my first full-size painting.

Day 8: Studio day

The last full painting day, dedicated to working on our chosen full-size piece in the studio. I painted the bridge over the lily pads from the previous day’s reference. It was the first “real” painting I’d ever made — meaning the first one intended to be hung on a wall, not tucked into a sketchbook. More on that below!

The IPO From a Vineyard

Even after my initial impulse-registration, I almost didn’t go on this trip.

The company I’d worked at for six and a half years — Chime — was preparing for its IPO. We knew it was coming, but the process is intentionally opaque; we didn’t know exactly when the IPO would occur. The actual date got confirmed only a couple of weeks before the retreat, and it landed squarely in the middle of my time at Perigord.

I genuinely debated cancelling. This was a thing I’d worked toward for so many years, and as a leader in the Growth engineering space driving many of the key metrics, it marked a significant milestone in my career. If I’d been home, I would have flown to the San Francisco office, been in the room, celebrated with my colleagues, watched it happen on the floor.

I decided to go on the trip anyway. I truly can’t say why I chose this; but I’m so glad I did.

The IPO ceremony happened on day two — the Luzech day. I was sitting in a churchyard above a vineyard, in the south of France, with a glass of wine and a paintbrush and eleven women I’d known for forty-eight hours, watching from across the world while the company I’d helped build went public on the New York Stock Exchange. The ladies took photos of me painting and watching the livestream. The entire experience was surreal, and I feel so lucky on all accounts!

What Renee taught me (including how to actually use masking fluid)

Renee Walden is one of those teachers who knows exactly when to lean in and when to step back and let you cook (as the kids say). She walked us through perspective, foliage, color mixing, composition — the core stuff, the stuff every plein air painter needs in their bones. Her demos were generous and genuinely optional; nobody made you feel weird for skipping one to wander a market.

But the lesson that stuck with me wasn’t a technique. It was permission.

Renee gently pushed me to do two things I’d been avoiding for a long time. The first was working at full size — making an actual painting, on actual paper, intended to be hung on a wall. I work in sketchbooks. I love sketchbooks: the page is contained, the stakes are low, nobody sees it unless I show them. A “real” painting felt vulnerable, and like something only a “real” artist would make — a role I’m still growing into.

The second was masking fluid. I had decided, at some point, that masking fluid wasn’t for me — too fussy, too finicky, too much. Renee suggested I try it for the lily pad bridge. I did, and it was a revelation! The crispness of the bridge surrounded by the lush vegetation was only possible because of the masking fluid. I came home a convert!

The bigger lesson, the one that’s harder to articulate, is what Renee created by not over-instructing. Ten of us would sit in the same churchyard, looking at the same vineyards — and what each of us painted was wildly different. Different focal points, different palettes, different cropping, different stories. And every one of those paintings was good — not because it followed a rule, but because it reflected what mattered to that person at that moment.

I noticed that when I painted what genuinely pulled at me — an interesting stone, a tree with ivy, a single shutter — I felt connected to the work in a way I hadn’t before. The results felt more like me. My skills grew more in those nine days than I think they would have in months of careful demos, and I’m pretty sure it’s because I was finally painting from curiosity instead of direction. As someone who tends to overthink everything, practicing intentional focus was so valuable!

I’m still figuring out what to do with that, honestly. But it’s changed how I approach every painting since.

The Paintings I Came Home With

Nine sketchbook spreads and one full-size painting — my first ever! 🎨

Please pardon my dust — I’m currently redoing my site styling, so have temporarily removed photo galleries! This will be back soon (May 2026)

The full-size painting hangs in my home now. I look at it more than I expected to — not because it’s the best thing I’ve ever made, but because of what it represents. The first one I made with the intention of hanging it. A wonderful adventure, the one that almost wasn’t taken, that will have such a strong impact on me for years to come.

Final Thoughts

There’s a phrase I’ve been turning over since I got home from Perigord: paint what calls to you. It sounds like advice you’d see on a watercolor mug 😅 — but it’s the actual thing that changed in me on this trip, and I don’t have a more elegant way to say it.

A retreat in the right place, with the right people, will give you the time and space to figure out what calls to you.

If you’re considering one — and you’ve made it this far in the post, so I think you are — go. The version of you that comes home is meaningfully different from the one that left. Honestly, that’s the most succinct summary I can give.

If you want to see more from the trip, I have a reel with photos and a sketchbook flip-through on Instagram. You can also follow along @elyestelle for what I’m working on now.

And if you book a retreat because of this post — please come back and tell me! I want to hear about it 💛.

Thinking about a retreat and have practical questions — cost, packing, solo travel, jet lag, all of it? I’m putting together a separate post answering everything I get asked about watercolor retreats. Subscribe below and you’ll be the first to read it.