# Collage Your Travels Art Retreat with Artist Catherine Rains in France

Join mixed media artist Catherine Rains for a week of storytelling through collage in the enchanting Loire Valley, France. This immersive retreat invites you to chronicle your travel experience through a soulful blend of collage-making and smartphone photography. Each step of the way, you’ll be gently supported to follow your creative spark as you experiment with techniques for making expressive, one-of-a-kind collage papers, and then transform them into collages that are infused with the colors, textures, and spirit of your time in France.Whether you’re brand new to collage or an experienced artist looking to deepen your practice, this retreat is open to all levels.Inspiration will come not just from the studio, but from the world around you. You’ll explore the vibrant atmosphere of a local French market, the riverside charm of Saumur, and the exquisite patterned gardens of Château de Villandry. These excursions offer endless opportunities to gather source material, capture photos that tell the story of your travels, and create two concertina-style journals that reflect the beauty and energy of your week in the Loire.But the journey doesn’t end there. Armed with new skills and expanded creative confidence, you’ll return home ready to collage your future adventures, whether exploring your own neighborhood or traveling across the globe. And perhaps most importantly, you’ll leave with lasting friendships and deep connections to kindred spirits who share your passion for creativity and discovery.You’ll stay in a 19th-century château surrounded by quiet gardens and woodland paths. Enjoy fresh, nourishing meals each day, find cozy spaces for reflection and sketching, and connect with a small circle of like-minded creatives. Evenings invite conversation, community, and celebration of your evolving work.

## Details

- **Dates:** September 2 - 9, 2026
- **Location:** Concourson-sur-Layon, France
- **Starting Price:** $4,250
- **Category:** Painting

## Program

### Collage Your Travels Art Retreat
Join mixed media artist Catherine Rains in the Loire Valley, France, for a retreat rooted in self-discovery through collage and travel photography. Surrounded by vineyards, stone villages, and garden paths, you will spend a week creating layered artwork that captures the feeling of being somewhere fully. Using hand-painted papers, altered photographs, and found materials, you will explore how to turn daily experiences into something personal and lasting.Over the course of seven days, you’ll create more than eleven types of collage papers, each reflecting the energy of the Loire Valley and your unfolding experience. Mid-week you will create the first of two concertina journals where you will start to use your growing collection of collage papers to learn collage composition.Whether you arrive with no background in collage or bring a practiced hand, you will be invited to slow down and look closer and to gather and translate the world around you into something personal and resonant.You will walk through the patterned hedges and sculpted symmetry of Château de Villandry, photographing clipped leaves and shifting shadows in the garden paths. In Saumur, you will gather images of limestone alleys, iron balconies, and shopfronts worn soft by time. At the village market, you will move among crates of fruit and stacks of printed paper, collecting textures and objects that speak to the tone of daily life.You will leave with two concertina journals that chronicle the sights, sounds, and small details of the Loire Valley.Topics covered in your classes include:How to use a limited color palette of 2 primaries to create harmonious collage papersCreating a collection of 11+ types of collage papers using travel-friendly techniquesBuilding a mini concertina journal mid-week to explore collage compositionSmartphone photography for capturing meaningful travel imageryInfusing a collage with the energy, texture, and rhythm of a placeMaking a one-of-a-kind travel concertina collage journal during the final daysCreating from a place of joy, intention, and love…and many more!The retreat takes place at a majestic 19th-century château featuring lush gardens, a heated pool, and stunning surroundings. Immerse yourself in French culture in a picturesque setting, coupled with authentic French cuisine prepared by the venue's private chef. Indulge in a wine-tasting event hosted by a renowned sommelier in the château's gardens, where you'll discover the finest flavors of the region.

### Day 1: Arrival
Arrive at Angers' St. Laud train station with enough time to catch the 4:00 PM group transfer, arriving at the beautiful château by 5:00 PM. Upon arrival, you'll be warmly welcomed by Catherine and your fellow artists. After settling into your comfortable room, take part in an orientation tour to get familiar with the incredible venue, including its picturesque gardens, serene woodlands, historic salon, and cozy library. In the evening, join Catherine and the art group for a special welcome dinner. Indulge in a delicious, three-course meal accompanied by a delicious glass of French wine and delightful cheese platters.

### Day 2: Art at the château
Wake slowly to birdsong and filtered light, then step outside for a refreshing breakfast in the château gardens. Sip your coffee and ease into the day’s rhythm while Catherine introduces the creative focus ahead.Begin with setting personal and artistic intentions. Ask what you want to uncover in yourself, and how that curiosity can guide your creative choices. With Catherine’s direction, start turning those ideas into painted and printed collage papers using a limited palette of two primaries, plus black and white. Play with texture, brushwork, and subtle shifts in value. Move between instinct and observation while gathering small natural elements around the property, which will become part of your visual vocabulary for the rest of the week.After lunch, carry the morning’s momentum into using monoprinting techniques with vegetables, leaves, coffee, and salt. Over the course of the week, you’ll build a wide-ranging collection of more than eleven types of collage papers, each one capturing the essence of your time in the Loire Valley. The surface of each sheet will become a place to hold emotion, memory, and the quiet shifts in how you see.As the sun shifts lower, wander back through the gardens, rest by the pool, or leaf through a favorite book in the château library. In the evening, gather for a warm, seasonal dinner paired with local wines.

### Day 3: Art trip to a local French market
Begin your day with a visit to a bustling French market, alive with color and scent.Wander through stalls stacked with fresh produce, spices, breads, cheeses, and flowers, taking reference photos of whatever draws your eye. Pause at tables of vintage papers, advertisements, packaging, and handwritten signs, selecting pieces to carry back as both visual memories and future collage materials. Every item you collect will become part of your own unique interpretation of the market.Back at the château, rest over a garden lunch and then move into the studio. Begin the afternoon by spreading out your finds. With Catherine’s guidance, start shifting these everyday fragments into collage paper through crayon resist, painted overlays, and layering techniques. Paint directly over advertisements and receipts. Turn travel documents into pattern and color. Let what you gathered in the morning reshape itself into something beautiful and new.As light softens, step outside and notice how the landscape feels different now. Sit beneath the trees, take a walk through the grasses, or leaf through something quiet. End the day together with a warm and delicious dinner, paired with a glass of wine.

### Day 4: Art trip to Saumur
Begin with a full breakfast and prepare to head out to Saumur, a riverside town shaped by pale limestone, iron balconies, and steep rooftops.Walk its winding streets where ivy spills over old walls and shop windows are lined with vintage packaging and handwritten labels. Notice faded posters, produce crates, tiled doorsteps, and the worn textures of shutters and signage. Use your phone to capture reference photos that tell the story of your journey. Gather paper scraps, ads, wrappers, and any found material that carries the visual language of the town.Return to the château and unpack your images and objects. With Catherine’s guidance, start transforming what you collected into layered collage papers. Paint over advertisements and turn them into artwork that reflects your experience and artistic voice. Try new techniques that respond to the textures and colors of Saumur, building surfaces that reflect its contrasts: sunlight on stone, shadow under balconies, and the soft geometry of old ironwork. Learn to create many types of “finishing touch” collage papers on tissue paper that will add the perfect top layer to the collages you will start creating the following day. Continue shaping a practice that allows collage to travel with you, wherever you go.Step outside to walk among the trees or pause in the studio to take in the work so far. Gather again for an evening meal, and let the patterns and textures of Saumur linger as you think forward to what they’ll become next.

### Day 5: Art at the château
Wake to a wholesome breakfast and fresh coffee, then return to the intentions you set when the retreat began.Sit with Catherine and revisit the intentions you set at the start of the retreat. Reflect on how your work has changed and begin embedding those ideas into a new mini concertina journal. Use this small format to explore how layout, contrast, and placement create clarity and meaning. Learn to work with the painted papers you’ve already made, applying core principles of composition while allowing intuition to guide the page.After a refreshing lunch, return to your space and spread out everything created so far. Catherine will introduce a few additional collage paper-making techniques to expand your collection. What you create now will lead into the travel journal you’ll begin shaping in the days ahead.As the light shifts outside, step away from the table and take in how far your work has come. Share dinner with the group, surrounded by pages that now hold your own visual language.

### Day 6: Trip to Château de Villandry
Step into the day with a hearty breakfast and coffee before heading out toward the Château de Villandry.Pass through farmland and stone villages until the towers appear and the gardens open wide around them. Walk with your camera through rows of clipped hedges, patterned flowerbeds, and long canal paths. Photograph sculpted leaves, repeating borders, framed arches, and the tension between symmetry and growth. Move through the Garden of Love, the Water Garden, and the kitchen beds lined with herbs and edible flowers. Document anything that holds rhythm or what catches your eye and lights up your heart along the way.Pause midday for a packed lunch in the gardens. Go over your photos and talk with Catherine about how to select and edit your images, and convert them into black-and-white images that will form the focal points for your main travel journal.In the afternoon, return to the château to create your main travel concertina journal. You’ve spent the week building up to this moment, experimenting with more than eleven distinct approaches to collage paper-making. Begin by sorting through the beautiful collage of painted papers you've created, sorting by value. You will then set aside the ones that make your heart jump a beat when you look at them, and begin creating your travel collages, integrating your photographs, and using the composition tools introduced earlier in the week.Enjoy dinner together as the sky darkens across the property, and take in how a single day can now live in your hands as something entirely your own.

### Day 7: Art at the château
Begin with the sound of paper shuffling and the smell of coffee in the air as you prepare to bring the retreat into focus.As the week nears its end, spend the morning continuing to create collages in your travel concertina journal. Pull from the collection of collage papers created throughout the week, weaving in your favorite photographs of your journey through the Loire Valley. Catherine will offer guidance as you create each collage, offering suggestions for making them a unique expression of you and your journey. At the end, narrate the story that your collages are sharing about what you learned and experienced.After lunch, gather for the closing ceremony and open your beautiful travel journal. Consider the intentions you set when you arrived and how they were met, were transformed, and what they taught you along the way. Share your favorite moments, the images that surprised you, and how the Loire Valley found its way into your materials and your heart. Walk through your collage travel book with Catherine and others, page by page, taking in the story you’ve assembled.Spend the last stretch of daylight however you choose. End the evening with a final dinner, surrounded by good company and the pages that now carry everything you came here to find.

### Day 8: Departure
Enjoy breakfast with your art group, exchange any last contacts, and get ready for your 8:00 AM transfer to the St. Laud train station, arriving at about 9:00 AM.

## Instructors

- **Catherine Rains** - Mixed media & collage artist, educator

## Accommodation

### French Château

### Shared room - shared bathroom

### Shared standard ensuite room (female only)

### Shared superior ensuite room (female only)

### Shared bathroom - single room (female only)

### Single standard ensuite room

### Single superior ensuite room

### Single deluxe suite

## Book This Retreat

Visit [https://uptrek.com/retreat/collage-your-travels-retreat-artist-catherine-rains-france](https://uptrek.com/retreat/collage-your-travels-retreat-artist-catherine-rains-france) to make a reservation.

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