Nature Making: The Artist’s Way

Leader: Nancy-Violet Downs

Cost: £525 per person

Retreat Description:
This retreat is a spiritual and creative journey, a cocoon of connection, to ourselves, to each other and to God.
Nancy’s ethos as an artist and facilitator is directly linked to her spirituality. This retreat takes inspiration from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and uses a combination of Rydal Hall’s beautiful surroundings, and guided techniques of automatic creating, to connect us with the divine through nature.

Day 1: 10am: Guided meditative activity outside in the woodland or garden.
Guided automatic writing and drawing exercise, and introduction to The Artist’s Way Morning Pages- a spiritual journaling practice of 3 pages of solitary automatic writing every morning, to connect you with God/The Great Creator and open creative channels.
Julia Cameron describes this practice as “special time between you and God”. 12.30pm: Welcome lunch. 2-4pm: natural dye examples and demonstration. Participants will dye their fabrics in the dye baths, and we will use a simple PH shifting process with lemon juice to bleach patterns into the fabric. 4pm: Relax before dinner. Free time in evening.

Day 2: 9am: morning pages (solitary practice wherever participants feel comfortable). This practice is personal and can be done before we all come together for breakfast 9.30am.
Breakfast 10.30am: gentle walk to the waterfall, bringing sketchbooks, drawing materials, watercolours. When we reach the waterfall we will do some guided creative activities, including guided automatic writing, blind drawing, watercolour experimentation using water from the stream, foraging and frottage techniques, mobile making from found natural materials. Material collection will be done in a conscious and sustainable way, participants encouraged to collect a twig, a rock, leaves, etc to create prints, rubbings and mobiles. This session will encourage intuitive making, so not each participant will have the same outcomes, all techniques will be demonstrated and participants supported individually by Nancy.
1pm: lunch/afternoon break followed by meditative activity. 2-4pm back at the barn or garden for textiles activity. Dyed fabric will be dry by now and we will work onto these. Using a range of techniques participants will create individual pieces. Techniques include: tracing drawings from sketchbook to create monoprints onto fabric, drawing from photographs, drawing directly with fabric pens, printing with found natural materials, simple hand embroidery, adding writing in visual pieces. Participants can create a cushion cover, a wall piece or anything else they would like. 4pm: Relax before dinner. Free time in evening.

Day 3: 9am: morning pages (solitary practice wherever participants feel comfortable). This practice is personal and can be done before we all come together for breakfast 9.30am breakfast 10.30am morning meditative activity & walk down to the stream or another woodland area. This time can bring textile work to work directly in nature. Each participant will have something unique so I will support them individually with their making 12.30pm lunch
1.30-4pm continue working in the barn or garden on textile piece. At this stage participants can be refining their main piece or working on anything else they want from the techniques we have learned. 4pm: break/relax before dinner. Evening activity for final night: live acoustic music (hey bailey).

Day 4: 9am: morning pages (solitary practice wherever participants feel comfortable). This practice is personal and can be done before we all come together for breakfast 9.30am breakfast 10.30am closing ceremony – a chance to display and view all work, celebrate and connect. Chance to wrap up any creations with support from me and assistant.
12pm goodbye lunch and well wishes.