Situated near the sea and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Valley of the Temples, the Fattoria Mosé is an ancestral country estate, home for generations to the Agnello family.

Liberally splashed with the yellow, violet, scarlet and white of wild orchids, wisteria, poppies and mimosa, the Fattoria's formal and informal gardens bear prodigious succulents and palms, and the 18th-century manor, with its complex of quadrangles, quaint old relics and impromptu patios has its very own chapel which is perfect to paint.

Amongst other compositions are landscapes and animals, and the 500 year-old gnarled and knotted olive trees make a fascinating study.


You'll enjoy delicious meals in the manor's handsome dining room, each prepared in the Sicilian tradition and featuring the Fattoria's home-grown organic produce - such as the pistachios and olives which you might like to nibble with your evening aperitif. Later, linger for conversation in the manor's hospitable lounge.

Accommodation consists of pleasing, commodious, fully-furnished apartments, each with its own private terrace overlooking a courtyard. There is also a brand-new swimming pool.

Painting trips are to the gardens and ruins of the Valley of the Temples and to the small coastal resort of Marina di Palma, where a customary seafront passegiata and a scrumptious Sicilian ice-cream-in-a-bun will make your stay complete.

Bettina Schroeder lives and works in London

Born and educated in Germany she moved to London in the 1980s, after studying in Berlin.
Her work ranges from painting to sculpture, installations, live art, and photography, and has
influences from her childhood in the former East Germany, her family's subsequent escape
to the West Germany's VW manufacturing town Wolfsburg, and her life in the UK.

I like to digest events of day to day politics or details of everyday life to express my concerns
about the world around me. This can take many forms and what ever seems the most
appropriate medium at hand will do: knitting a newspaper after reading bad news, cutting up
plastic bags to give them new life in a different medium. Sometimes I prefer the traditional
method of oil painting, but the initial motivation, the reason for working, is paramount.

In the past I have also used live art; 'Joan Wayne' as John Wayne, 'Underneath the
Matterhorn', 'The Pools Winner' etc. The no man's land between film and painting allows a
more narrative approach.

At present I am principally occupied with sculpture and installation: clay figures in boxes or
photographs based on characters from classic literature, by authors like Joyce, Shelley, Marx
or from popular culture and art, as when graffiti by Banksy is just visible behind a group of
clay models posing on Essex Road.

Formative early influences by art movements like Dada, the 'Junge Wilde' in Berlin, and later
Britart, encouraged my belief that the making of art has no limits, either in the technical
sense, or in subject matter.