Wyatt Waters needed to be surreptitious about this particular quest. For a plein-air painter like Waters, no trip to France would be complete without a visit to Monet’s Garden at Giverny to pay homage to the Impressionist master, get a first-hand look at his famed gardens and, fingers crossed, channel some of that same inspiration.

Waters and his wife, Kristi, thought he could paint there when they lined up a bed-and-breakfast stay with their host, a gardens tour guide and expert on the artist. But when they arrived at their lodging, the path to paint did not seem so clear. The site saw 750,000 visitors last year, and while drawing may not be forbidden, access is denied to anyone coming in with painting materials.

“She says, ‘Oh no, you can’t paint in the gardens. … Too bad, it’s gotten so commercial, of course,’” the artist recalled of conversation with their hosts. But Kristi Waters negotiated, and the needle seemed to move. “She said, ‘Well, you can try to paint in the gardens.’”

“We had a loose interpretation of that,” Waters said. They adapted. He took in a bag, and so did his wife. “Between the two of us, that was my painting kit.”

He settled on a park bench, easel in his lap, and got to work. About three hours in, “They come up and they say, ‘You cannot paint here.’” The couple packed up to leave, but their host caught up to them with a last-minute reprieve, ““You can go ahead and finish.”

With pluck, ingenuity and a bit of grace, Waters managed to complete this watercolor in the famed Monet’s Garden at Giverny in France. It was the only one. Art courtesy Wyatt Waters

The next day, they are denied admittance. But he got a painting out of the experience, and remembering those words about commercialization, dubbed it, “Give Me Monet (that’s what I want).” Waters laughed. “It’s a little dig, you know?”

That was summer before last, and the beauty of the site lingers still. “That truly was the best garden I’ve ever been to, and I think that’s because he designed it to paint.” Waters said, his face lighting up at the memory and his hands stretched wide as dinner plates to describe the dahlias he saw. “Do you know ‘Honey, (I) Shrunk the Kids’? It was like that.”

The 2023 original watercolor sold this past spring, but a limited-edition print brightened the window of Wyatt Waters Gallery in Clinton for the opening of “French Accents,” a show featuring dozens of new watercolors, most of them painted in France this past summer on another trip. Waters painted 81 paintings in 53 days—a production that impresses even the man behind the brushstrokes when he stands in his gallery, surrounded by the framed output.

“French Accents,” a show of more than 60 watercolors painted onsite in France by Wyatt Waters, remains on view through December at his gallery in Clinton. Photo by Sherry Lucas

“Wow,” he chuckled, looking around. “That’s a lot of paintings.” The exhibition’s show of 62 paintings, the majority from this past summer plus a handful from 2023, remain on display through December.

The showcase also celebrates the newly expanded Wyatt Waters Gallery in Clinton’s Olde Towne district. The addition of a second floor doubled the gallery space downstairs and provided a second-floor production area to handle the totes, prints, mugs, ties, socks, scarves, shirts and other gift products emblazoned with his colorful images, as well as a balcony overlooking the Clinton’s brick streets downtown.

An Olde Towne fixture for 25 years, his gallery started in a tiny space in the front half of a building across the street. It has occupied its current location since 2002. “When I bought the building, it had no air-conditioning and a 60-year-old furnace,” he recalled. “We had done everything we could in the situation we had. … We had things on top of each other like you wouldn’t believe.”

Now, two long walls hold the suite of framed watercolors he painted in France, benches beneath hold drawers for more storage, and the space in-between accommodates visitors. At the show’s and building’s opening reception, crowds still spilled out into the street.

A recent renovation and expansion added a second floor to Wyatt Waters Gallery in Clinton, doubling the exhibition space and providing an upstairs production area for gift items bearing his imagery. Photo by Sherry Lucas

The springboard for this latest trip to France was a six-day watercolor workshop Waters led at Chateau de Maroatte, the medieval castle home of music industry legend Miles Copeland III (I.R.S. Records founder and former manager of The Police and Sting), in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. “It is a real honest-to-God castle. It’s got a moat around it. Behind me was a 20-foot stone wall,” Waters said, pointing to his painting of the structure.

From there, an extended stay kept them in France just shy of two months. “Last year, we made trips to Normandy and that side of France a good bit,” Waters said, as they laid the groundwork for this workshop. “Everybody thought we were over there, drinking champagne at the Olympics, but we were working!” he joshed. They’d already been entertaining the idea of a book on France, and while this summer’s trip produced dozens more paintings, the project will require another trip next year to capture Paris, with a book planned for fall 2026.

A field of lavender in the French countryside captured the eye of the artist, in a trip to France this past summer. Waters brought the scene home in this watercolor, “Purple Hay.” Art courtesy Wyatt Waters

Waters, a plein-air devotee, is a well-known fixture outdoors in Mississippi on roadsides and sidewalks, as he committed its beloved staples and cultural icons to brushstrokes and paper. He also entertained the inevitable curiosity and questions of passersby.

“I love Mississippi. I’m going to die here. This is it,” Waters, a seventh generation Mississippian, said. “But pretty frequently, people will ask, ‘Whatcha doing here?’” he said. “They’ll think you’re surveying most of the time, because you’ve got a tripod. … You’re in the middle of nowhere, and they don’t always know what you’re doing. But the older culture of France, they just took it for granted that you’re painting,” he said with a shrug. “No big deal, he’s just painting. … I think they think that’s just normal. That was refreshing. I liked that.”

“Pacing the Cage” pays homage to artist Vincent Van Gogh, in a scene painted onsite at Saint-Paul de Mausole Asylum where Van Gogh sought treatment for mental illness. Art courtesy Wyatt Waters

Travels followed in the footsteps of the French masters, almost like an impressionism to-do list. “Pacing the Cage,” at Saint-Paul de Mausole Asylum where Vincent Van Gogh admitted himself, pictures a loggia where muted shadow and light square off in a tunneling perspective.

“Van Gogh had stayed just upstairs, right above the room where that door was,” Waters said. “It was important to me, personally, because he’s the first artist I really fell in love with … not just because of his work, but because of his letters to his brother.”

Waters painted the trees, heavy with apples, in front of Renoir’s home and a view of Mont Sainte-Victoire that, more than a century ago, inspired a series of paintings by Cézanne. “That’s pretty much the view he painted. I was on somebody’s property, but they did not run me off. … It’s a good view, and it worked out well,” Waters said. Fields of sunflowers, hay bales and lavender capture the countryside at its most picturesque.

Waters’ journey in the footsteps of French masters had to include Mont Sainte-Victoire, a favorite subject of artist Paul Cézanne. Art courtesy Wyatt Waters

Paintings also capture the juxtaposition of centuries-old architecture and a vibrant slice of contemporary life, such as sisters from Africa selling their wares in a street market in Antibes. One leans on an ancient wall, texting on her cell phone. “They were very nice. They came over and talked to me. That’s the good thing about it, when you set up and paint—you get some energy from people doing what they’re doing.”

A landscape painted in the Alps, amid clouds so heavy with humidity the very air seeped moisture, bore marks of the weather. “Those are raindrops,” Waters pointed to small, subtle spots on the painting. “I started it outside, but it got so heavy I couldn’t finish it. We rolled down the window of the car, put the painting inside and I leaned through the window of the car and painted it that way. We’re not used to Alps here. … I like that kind of phenomenon. We don’t get it here,” he said, pointing out details of working with the conditions for certain effects.

“That’s the thing about plein air. You have to think on your feet, because circumstances are going to change and you have to make it work. … If it was done in Utica, I might say, ‘Well, It’s time to go home.’ But when you’re in France, you say, ‘Well, I’ve got to make it work.’”

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Mississippi Watercolorist Wyatt Waters Follows in the Footsteps of French Masters

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