Montmartre: Where I Fell in Love with the Artist Life

La Maison Rose in Montmartre, Paris - The Artists’ Neighborhood

In 2022, I took my first solo trip — a bold, curious adventure that led me to Paris, France. I didn’t know it then, but I was walking straight into the beginning of something that would change my life.

I stayed in Montmartre, the legendary artist’s quarter perched high above the city, and from the moment I arrived, it felt like I had stepped into another world or maybe even another time. As if I stepped through a time portal.

Montmartre is so much more than a neighborhood. It’s like a living, breathing poem — cobblestone streets lined with ivy-draped balconies, pastel buildings, walls full of murals and graffiti. It was like walking through a painting. The birthplace of Impressionism, international artists fill its art studios and galleries, something always on the verge of being created along every corner.

One afternoon, I wandered down a random street just a few blocks from the touristy square. I came across an ordinary-looking building called the Montmartre Museum or Musée de Montmartre. The building historically housed Renoir and several other 19th century artists. As I walked through the courtyard in the back of the museum, I discovered a wooden door. Like something out of a storybook, the door led to a hidden garden.

The Back Garden at Montmartre Museum, 2022

“I felt like I had walked into a scene of that movie Midnight in Paris.”

Lush green grass, soft and serene, with a pond in the middle and quaint cafe on the side. Circular tables were fixed around the pond. The garden dwellers sat in silence, each one with a book or a sketchpad. I felt like I had walked into a scene of that movie Midnight in Paris. If you continued beyond the tables there were paths that led into a small foresty area full of lone benches and tables, surrounded by plants and flowers. I sat and wrote poetry taking in the history of the grounds I sat on. This quiet, hidden patch of land in the center of the city.

Montmarte Museum Garden, 2022

That garden stirred something in me. I sat there thinking about how Monet, Picasso, and Van Gogh once painted in the very streets I had just walked. That I sat on the very benches that these artists got inspiration, dreamed, and created entire movements. They built a world from color and rebellion and friendship, and that world from centuries past was somehow pulsing all around me.

I spent most of the day there, writing poetry and journaling, sitting in meditation, taking in the scene. I was so inspired that once I left I headed straight to an art store. I bought a tiny watercolor set and mini watercolor papers.

“I had experienced so much and was so inspired to explore art and more of Paris, I was full of energy.”

In the days that followed I began painting outside for the first time in my life — in parks, on benches, on steps. Something about being in Montmartre and Paris in general made it all feel natural, like I was part of a lineage I didn’t even know I belonged to until then.

I watched the street artists in the famous square, Place du Tertre, setting up their easels each morning. Watching them create in real time, right there in the open was like witnessing a kind of magic.

On my last night in Paris, I couldn’t sleep. I had experienced so much and was so inspired to explore art and more of Paris, I was full of energy. It was five in the morning, and I got up and walked over to the steps of the Sacré-Cœur just as dawn began.

Dawn at the Sacré-Cœur steps, 2022

I sat at the top, overlooking all of Paris as the sky turned soft shades of rose and orange I knew I wanted to be an artist someday.

Montmartre didn’t just inspire me.
It changed me.

It gave me permission to begin.