I began to expand my range of contacts as quickly as I could and soon heard about a course in oil painting in the small town of Terrasson about 15 minutes from my home. Claudie Herquelot was the teacher, a talented oil painter whose photo realism still life could take up to three months to paint. She had studied in New York in the States had an agent in Paris and had won several prizes so she came with good credentials. I had never painted in oil at that point so was a little nervous of how I was going to take to them. I needn't have worried. Claudie's group , meeting each week in a bijou chateau were friendly and welcoming, fortunately Claudie. spoke English, and my fellow students were like me all beginners. Her methods were straight forward but exacting. She began by an immersion in drawing which was such a good foundation. At the same time I enrolled in another group which met once a month in Bergerac, a whole hour further away. The tutor Adam Cope was an arch teacher at the local art lycee and he too concentrated on drawing but in plein air outside his studio in the vineyards of Montbazillac just outside the town. Drawing grapes, the Chateau, wheelbarrows, not to mention wine bottles was a very pleasant occupation not to mention eating home cooked french lunch on his terrace. My next foray was equally sociable. I joined a workshop of twenty amateur oil painters in Perigueux where I went for three years before realising that the headaches I had begun to suffer were due to the strong fumes in a poorly ventilated room. My oil painting days seemed over, but I had made new friends, learnt loads and my work was selling. Now it was time to find pastures new