Cara Heard reflects on art residency in France

PERRY — Cara Heard, the Owner of Lush Art in Perry, decided to escape the business world and spend a month on an art residency in the French countryside. 

Heard has been painting for 16 years and said it started as a way to fill in the time while her son napped. She said she painted to fill her “creativity bucket” after being a hairstylist for years. 

“I started because I still had paintings I liked and I wanted it and I was like, ‘I can try to do that’ and it just turned into a whole thing, so I kept painting,” she said. 

Heard eventually started her business, Paint with Lush Art, in 2013 and dedicated her time to teaching others to paint. She said the company strived to build a creative community in middle Georgia.

Heard started playing more with different painting styles and figuring out who she was. In this process, she discovered she loved the mixed media artwork style and wanted to study it more. 

“I love layers, I love adding pieces of people’s stories into their art. When I make a custom commissioned piece, I ask them a lot of questions about what is home to them? What kind of things remind them of home? Where they lived before? What their favorite quotes are? And that kind of thing,” she said. “I can kind of work a little pieces into the collage of that and then as they sit with the art, they will discover these things I don’t point them out, I let them kind of find them on their own. It’s kind of like a little easter egg that they’re hunting for that tell them a little bit about themselves which I think is really fun and interesting and makes it their story and not just my art.”

This led to her applying for an artist residency and spending a month in Château D’Orquevaux in France.

The estate is located in the French countryside and is a very exclusive program. Artists and writers worldwide apply for residency, and Heard was one of the select few accepted out of applicants from over 120 countries.

She shared that she never anticipated getting into the program because she felt it was a difficult bucket list check. The program only accepts 18% of applicants. Her group had people from everywhere, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Kuwait, England and Russia.

According to Heard, only 50 people live in the town of Orquevaux, which has no businesses or restaurants. The residency program employs people in the area, and there was always somebody working and preserving the estate.

She said everyone gets their own bedroom, shared bathroom and their own studio. Heard shares they could work at any time and there was 24/7 access to everything. She said some people would work on their art at 3 a.m. and others at 6 a.m.

Heard escaped her day-to-day life and experienced a life full of art and relaxation in her residency. 

“It’s beautiful all around there, so I took long walks, I have great pictures. It was so freeing to be away from the day to day life and then you don’t realize how much the everyday grind gets to you,” she said.

She also shared that while she was there, the Château had somebody cook for attendees. Breakfast was served for Heard every morning, lunch was served at noon, and dinner was served every night at 7 p.m. She said they did not have to think about food; all they had to do was eat.

“There’s something really magical about just taking the emotional load off of your plate and just being in this creative space with all these other people that are also artists and you can kind of pick their brain and talk to them,” she said.

Of the 20 people in her group, 15 were visual artists, and the other five were writers. She said the program varies, and sometimes, it also takes in photographers, filmmakers and screenwriters. The age range in Heard’s group was between 22 and 70. 

She said she is happy her group remains in contact with each other, and they plan to return to the Château in two years to check in on their progress. 

“It was interesting to see what all people put into their process and also just having time to see and feel what your process was,” she said.

During her time in the program, she worked on a set of oracle cards based on the Lenormand method, which a French woman created during the Napoleon period.

Heard explained the method, saying the woman created cards with specific visuals. She used the method as inspiration and made her own version of cards.

Also, while she was in the warm embrace of the countryside, she started a collection of chairs. The program director told attendees that each group had their own distinct element, and her group was the “mover of chairs.”

Heard shared in the salon: There were three couches, and a set of three or four chairs was around each. She said they would come down before dinner, and as people came in, they would move the chairs and make a circle. 

“We all talked together about what we have done that day and what we learned and what we are having trouble with. It was just fascinating to hear not everybody did that and so I liked that thought process and so I’m creating a collection of chairs that are all different and the whole point of the thing is to remember and remind you to make room at your table for other people, widen the circle so that you can learn from others. I think that is going to be fascinating,” she said.

So far, Heard has one piece done and left it at the Château for their collection. She has three small pieces finished and two in the works. She hopes to have a full collection of chairs by the end of the year. 

Heard also created a large mixed-media piece on the theme of boundaries, keeping a soft heart and letting people in. 

This experience inspired Heard to speak about the importance of art residencies and retreats for rising artists in the community. She is a member of 478 Creative, a group that meets in Macon monthly for educational purposes or artist talks. She will talk with the group in August and hopes people will figure out if retreats are a good fit for them. 

Heard shared residencies allow people time and space to be in their art, think about it, and reevaluate their lives.

While abroad, Heard also realized that she felt a different passion than usual for her business, Lush Art. 

“There’s just other things I want to do with my life. I’ve done that for 11 years, so I’ve put Lush Art on the market, it’s for sale, and hopefully someone will buy it and want to continue the art education in Perry or Warner Robins or somewhere in Houston County. I don’t want it to be me anymore,” she said.

Before leaving for France, she was thinking about moving. When she came back, she said she could not paint and sat on the idea for a little bit. Heard said she realized where she was in her life and wants to focus more on social media management, marketing and her art. She said she wants to focus less on running a business and making all the decisions.

“It’s interesting going from having no responsibilities except for painting back to the real world and like the reentry or reality and just feeling like something needed to change and to me that was the thing that made the most sense. Just making a list of the things I really enjoyed doing and the things that really kind of have been weighing me down. Big changes in the works,” she said.

Heard shared the residency was a magical idea of being able to devote her time to her art. She said she is a person who has high expectations and entered the program with an open mind. However, she said the program exceeded her expectations and was a magical experience.

“You get out of the car there and it is just breathtakingly beautiful, and you have this Château that feels like home almost instantly. All these artists have come in and out month after month and you kind of get to feel that energy and you get a blank slate,” she said.

Heard also said everything in the studio is white, even the walls, and everything she needed was provided. 

“It just had such a welcoming, wonderful, magical feel. It’s the only thing I can say about it and then when we would go walk around the grounds, it just feels like a fairyland. It didn’t feel real,” she said.

The retreat was a way for Heard to realize that she needed to focus more on her heart and move on from teaching it. She said it “filled her cup” for a long time, but she now wants to devote more time to her heart and marketing, which she was not able to do while managing her business. 

“I just want to broaden things a little bit. I think I’m just burnt out and I didn’t realize how burnt out I was until I was away from it because when you live, breathe, sweat all the things have tears, cry for a business for 11 straight years you don’t know how burdened you are until that is lifted for a little bit,” she said.

She also realized how fascinating it was to be close to creative people and discover their similarities. Heard said that even though all of them were different, coming from other countries, having different experiences and being of different ages, there was something wonderful about being surrounded by people with creative minds. 

One of Heard’s favorite things about being an artist is being able to turn her brain off while she paints. She said she is a very intuitive painter and lets things happen naturally as she is painting. 

Her process involves starting with an underpainting, then creating a collage, adding texture and painting some more. Heard said each piece has lots of layers, which she thinks reflects her as a person and the families she is painting for. 

“There’s just a lot to all of us and sometimes it takes a little while to get there but I enjoy that process of just letting go and seeing what happens and it’s always a surprise for me too,” she said.   

Heard also said she loves art that has meaning behind it, like her chair collection. She said to some people it’s just a chair, but she knows the meaning behind it and the layers beneath it.

“It’s great to have original art in people’s homes because it gives your home like a special energy that you’re not going to get if you’re just buying mass produced plastic art,” she said.

Art is crucial not only to Heard but also to her life, as she cannot live without it. 

“You hear people that are avid readers and then they stop picking up a book or you hear of someone that gets super into a sport and then they never do it again and they never really quite know that it’s like the last time they are going to do that thing. I can’t imagine not doing art in some capacity for the rest of my life. I hope that I’m doing it up until the very moment that I’m gone,” she said.

Art has been both a way to escape and has also helped Heard in different ways in her life.

“I just think that art has brought so much to my life; Lush Art in itself has brought so much to me. I met incredible people through that. It also helped me work on myself and my art. I think it pretty much means everything. It has now become a part of me that I can’t imagine not having,” she said. 

Moving forward, Heard has now put up her business for sale on the market and hopes to keep art in Houston County.

Heard has created a colorful canvas through her business in Perry, but now she is turning the page to a blank canvas and preparing for her next piece.