Impressions of Paris

An Artist's Sketchbook

Artist Cat Seto, founder of the acclaimed Ferme à Papier brand, introduces you to the City of Light as never before in this distinctive volume—both a visual feast and celebration of the artistic process—filled with lavish illustrations and descriptive meditations that capture the quotidian pleasures of France’s capital city and how they have inspired creativity.

In Impressions of Paris, Cat Seto takes you on a dazzling and enlightening tour of Paris, from familiar sights to hidden surprises, to reveal this legendary city as never before. Combining informative and entertaining vignettes, stories, and notes with stunning full-color illustrations, she draws parallels between the city and the art it inspires. Organized around four main principles of art—color, pattern, perspective, and rhythm—Impressions of Paris is a celebration of the artistic spark in the city’s mundane yet marvelous details: the pistachio and cassis palette triggered by the ice cream case at Berthillon; how a rainy stroll through an open air market transforms into a smudgy gouache (pronounced gwash) pattern; the lovely ubiquity of the iconic French stripe, the Breton.

Pretty and inventive, surprising and stimulating, Impressions of Paris captures the beauty and charms of this stunning city and extols its power to stimulate the creative imagination—inviting artists and art appreciators to intimately experience a painter’s process.