Meditative Art Retreat in Andalucia

Posted on June 22, 2017 by

Meditative Art Retreat. 21 – 28 October 2017

For my next art retreat I will teaching how to paint a self-portrait as our symbolic / mystic-self.  I will be offering meditative, gentle guidance, setting intentions, using guided meditations, knowing the painting as a secular prayer. Painting modern iconography. Teaching my own techniques: the methods I use such as painting my birds, or other spirit animals, how to paint a face, a figure, light and shade, a symbolic landscape, glazing, colour washes, pattern, how to bring forms forward or push them back through glazes, using under-painting through abstracted techniques, adding white, or leaving white space, using words as under-painting too. Techniques such as glazing, dry brush work, stippling, acrylic pen-work, detailing, and stenciling. Working from my favourite themes: Iconography, Goddess archetypes, the Divine Feminine, Jungian archetypes, symbolism, mysticism, metaphysical art, shamanic and alchemical totems, sacred geometry, pattern, ornament, process and intuitive painting.
For me, there must always be the still-point. The point where you find the zone, where the painting is painting itself through you as the conduit. Or you come to a point where there is a deep meditation.  This is my intention in my art practice and in teaching.
Painting in the studio, walking in the Alpujarras mountains, visiting Granada, beautiful healthy food cooked by Steve for every meal, yoga most mornings with Steffi, guided meditations. All meals, materials, yoga and activities will be included in the cost.  Cost doesn’t include flights or car-hire. Transport to and from the cortijo can be arranged (extra cost.)  Again it will be in beautiful Cortijo Las Salinas in Andalucia. To register an interest, please use the contact form or email me: alicemason64@gmail.com.

 

Cost £950 (GBP)

Includes beautiful accommodation with ensuite bathrooms, all materials, art tuition, access to the art studio at any time, yoga, all meals, (emphasis is on nutrition and dietary requirements are catered to.)  Also includes a trip to Granada, guided walk in the mountains, dining together, access to all the facilities the cortijo has to offer:  swimming pool, honesty bar, a beautiful communal living room and kitchen, an outdoor Moroccan chill-out area.

Cost doesn’t include flights or car-hire.  Airport transfer to and from the cortijo can be arranged through our private driver (extra cost.)

It is advised that you take out your own travel insurance.

The nearest airports are Granada or Malaga.

www.art-retreat-spain.com

http://www.art-retreat-spain.com/future-retreats/vita

 

 

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Hollyhocks, Lupins and the Sea

Posted on June 18, 2017 by

How beautiful this weather is.  Last night I dreamed of the vast seas again.  It always goes back to the time we sailed to Australia when I was a small child.  This informed and formed such a huge aspect of my psyche.  The dream was also a painting.  I dream in paint, it seems.  The colours were hyper-real.  The sea was paint.  A colour I love.  The deepest brightest turquoise.  In the dream, we were on a large boat, with other people, everyone was excited and we were hovering around a land, very far from our original homes.  This is a recurring dream.  It is always as though we are on the other side of the world.  In anticipation we are viewing the lands, and there are islands and bays and inlets.  On the land were growing giant pink hollyhocks.  Bright, architectural, elegant.

This morning I awoke and thought about all the variations I have had of this dream, and it’s always such a beautiful experience.  Arriving somewhere completely new on a boat.  Dreaming, I am so close to the land and sea, like I am here too, on the cliff top where I live.  The fact that I live close to the sea and above the sea is part of my own version of psychogeography.  The Saxon Shore Way is a path I walk as often as possible.  It is never static.  The movement of the sea, the view out to the horizon, to movement and possibilities.  The cargo boats moving through.  The walkers moving through and across the landscape.  Life passing through like a river.

I realised that the dream was visually similar to a painting I made a few years ago, although the flowers were lupins, not hollyhocks, the colours were the same.

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Writing The Map

Posted on June 17, 2017 by

writethemap

‘Wanderer, your footsteps are

the road and nothing more;

wanderer, there is no road,

the road is make by walking.’

Antonio Machado

The UK has the highest rate of internal migration in EU, (3.5% of population move annually). Our identity exists in the places we come from, live in and our journeys between the two.  The journey is an opportunity for exploration and reflection.  Writing The Map derives from a 192 mile walk, between the artist’s place of birth and present home, to explore ways identity is linked to journeys past, present and future. Maps – both digital and 2D – enable us to undertake journeys of discovery. They are objective representations of landscape, inviting us to follow prescribed directions and routes. They also enable us to reflect and organise our knowledge to better understand and share it.

Writing The Map draws on psychogeographical practices to subvert traditional mapping to…

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Me and a yellow cup

Posted on June 16, 2017 by

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Tea with my friend Susanne makes me happy so I asked her to take a photo of me.  We were sitting in her sunny kitchen.  She is always there, with her beauty and calm, and the kettle is always on.  Susanne is a rare being.  She laughs easily and we talk and it’s just easy and light.  She is an artist and everything in her home is bejewelled, covered in sequins, patchwork, upholstery, embroidery and joy.  Like me, she creates quite compulsively.  It’s so necessary for us both, like food, or tea.  I love my friends.

 

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Shinto

Posted on June 13, 2017 by

Shinto.

I painted this image after learning a little about Shinto. Shinto, also called kami-no-michi, is the ethnic religion of Japan that focuses on ritual practices to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present-day Japan and its ancient past.

The word Shinto (“way of the gods”) was adopted, originally as Jindō or Shindō, from the written Chinese Shendao (神道, pinyin: shén dào), combining two kanji: “shin” meaning “spirit” or kami; and “tō” meaning a philosophical path or study (from the Chinese word dào). The oldest recorded usage of the word Shindo is from the second half of the 6th century. Kami are defined in English as “spirits”, “essences” or “gods”, referring to the energy generating the phenomena. Since the Japanese language does not distinguish between singular and plural, kami refers to the divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms: rocks, trees, rivers, animals, places, and even people can be said to possess the nature of kami. Kami and people are not separate; they exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity.

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Grace

Posted on June 9, 2017 by

A large painting on canvas.  In my Etsy shop.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/535892319/grace-large-painting-on-canvas?ref=pr_shop

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The Blue Room

Posted on June 6, 2017 by

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The Blue Room.  Copyright Alice Mason 2017

https://www.etsy.com/listing/521388970/the-blue-room?ref=pr_shop

I love the subject of rooms and interiors and especially those with open windows.  For me,  the French post Impressionists are the most inspiring,  because of the play of light and colour, the detail of the rooms, the brushwork, seductive light, ‘la douceur’, the way the eye is led through the window to possibilities and the romanticism of the southern French light which was clearly intoxicating to the artists.  Some of my favourites are: Edouard Vuillard, Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy and Pierre Bonnard.

This painting hopes to portray the sultriness and langour of a hot afternoon.  The sea breeze,  the woman in the room holding flowers, receptive, in a reverie, window open, birdcage open, perhaps alluding to a former containment or constriction which has now been released into freedom, into the blue.

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Red Guitar

Posted on May 29, 2017 by

An original painting on canvas.  A painting about my childhood in Australia, the sound of the guitar my Dad played, growing up in the sixties and seventies,  my love of colour, pattern, spirals, idealism.

red guitar2

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Future Retreats

Posted on May 26, 2017 by

To be on the mailing list for future retreats and to learn about Alice’s next art retreat at Cortijo Las Salinas in Andalucia, Spain, please visit the website www.art-retreat-spain.com and visit the link: http://www.art-retreat-spain.com/future-retreats/

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from Women Who Run with the Wolves.

Posted on May 25, 2017 by

Although I did not call her by that name then, my love for Wild Woman began when I was a little child.  I was an aesthete rather than an athlete, and my only wish was to be an ecstatic wanderer.  Rather than chairs and tables, I preferred the ground, trees and caves, for in those places I felt I could lean against the cheek of God.

The river always called to be visited after dark, the fields needed to be walked in, so they could make their rustle-talk.  Fires need to be built in the forest at night, and stories needed to be told outside the hearing of grown-ups.

Dr  Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  From Women Who Run with the Wolves.

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