What’s writing doing in an art retreat?
Writing is a great aid to the artist’s process. We might consider it more ‘jotting and scribbling’ than writing to communicate or share.
I’m co-leading an art retreat in Vermont this summer: Vermont Landscape as Muse: Encaustics on Paper and the Written Word. Lorraine and I are thrilled to bring together visual and written forms of expression to help retreatants develop their voice and ideas.
Our main purpose for our writing is to use it as part of our awareness practice. What do you notice? What do your senses pick up? Gathering and capturing information using our senses and quick exercises in our journals will play a big role in our week.
I’ve got a set of easy, quick, and fun writing practices that will accompany the artmaking. We’ll use writing to access a sense of playfulness that will help us to not take ourselves too too seriously. We’ll venture out on nature walks and pause here and there to pull onto paper the sensual details we’re experiencing.
We’ll savor a journaling practice that helps us deepen our experience of the farm’s abundance. Reflective writing practice will also help us develop our ideas.
Writing is a companion practice to artmaking. Not for public sharing or to be a good writer, but to develop ourselves as writers. When you see writing in artist’s sketchbooks, you know it’s one of any of these things:
- Notes to self
- Ideas being formed and developed
- Scraps of inspiration
- Lists for the sacred and the mundane
- Reminders of the moment
Our sketchbooks will accompany us everywhere, ready to capture ideas, impressions and flashes of genius. No writing experience is required to participate.
We still have a few spots left in the Vermont art and writing retreat. All the information for Vermont Landscape as Muse is here.
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