England

We took a family vacation (Dad, step-mom, and one of the sisters) to England in the summer of 2014. I hadn't been back to England, one of my favorite places in the world, since I became a serious landscape painter, so I was delighted to have the chance to be there with my paints.

We started in Winchester and spent three nights, walking out across the water meadows to St. Cross hospital as well as seeing the main part of the town.

We stopped off in Salisbury only for the afternoon. I had to try painting the cathedral in homage to John Constable, my favorite painter who spent time there and painted it often.

Then we moved to Wells, where I had first been with my grandmother when I was 17. This small town with a stunning cathedral and a footpath right out into the countryside from the back of the Bishop's Palace immediately and enduringly became one of my touchstone, sanctuary places. We also took a side trip to Bath, where I sketched the Royal Crescent (on the right).

The family took another trip out of Wells on our other day in town, but I couldn't bear not to have at least one full day there, so I walked out onto the footpath to Dulcote and drew the cathedral rising up over the fields, one of the most enduring images for me from that trip when I was 17. I also drew a farm at Dulcote that has been in the same family for three generations. I know this because Richard, the current farmer, came to see what I was doing, told me the story of both sides of his family farming that land, and ended up inviting me into tea. I loved having tea in a farm kitchen with three Somerset farmers telling me their stories.

After our time in Wells, I dropped the family off to hike the Thames path while I headed north to revisit Yorkshire. I'd been dreaming of painting there for at least the last five years and was delighted to get the chance. I had a couple of days, though, before my B&B was expecting me, so I stopped in the Peak District in Derbyshire. I stayed in the utterly charming village of Hartington and spent a day and a half walking out on their footpaths to paint. It was stunning, and I now want to go back there and spend more time painting.

I finally got to the North Yorkshire Moors, the landscape that absolutely grabbed me when I was there in university. I've been dreaming of it ever since. I spent five unhurried nights at the delightful Rectory Farms B&B in the tiny village of Levisham. The road behind the pub leads straight up and out onto the moor, and I just walked and painted and hung out with sheep all week. It was everything I had hoped for.