I’ve been pondering the difference between a workshop and a retreat as I’m scheduling more of the latter and less of the former in 2022. A workshop is generally a fairly quick immersion into technique with opportunity to practice and study directly under an instructor whose teaching style and skill you admire.
A retreat, on the other hand, can be a number of different things, but one thing it most clearly affords is space and time for reflection. Technique and developing new skills may be part of it, but for me retreat has always emphasized taking time to myself to ponder, to think deeply, to try things that don’t necessarily move my work forward directly, but do so in a non-linear way and perhaps even more substantively as a result.
This coming year I will be co-teaching with my friend Lorraine Glessner again in Vermont at Lareau Farm and Inn. Lorraine is a fabulous artist and teacher. Our retreat - “Exploring Landscape In Encaustic & The Mark” - was such a rich and rewarding experience last year and I am thrilled that we will be offering it again in 2022.
Breakfast at Lareau Farm and Inn is something to look forward to and savor.
While this retreat focuses on utilizing the natural luminosity, textural, and layering possibilities of encaustic, it also moves beyond painting to consider marks that can be found in nature and their relationship to memory, change, and time. Students will have time to experiment with a range of drawing materials to depict the spirit and essence of the land. Daily hikes exploring the rugged natural beauty of The Mad River Valley, along with journaling, meditation, morning yoga, readings, and expressive mark-making exercises, will provide the inspiration with which to develop ideas and provide areas of focus for series-based work, while also developing your personal artistic voice. Considerations of our body’s connection and its direct relationship to landscape will also be discussed. Optional individual critiques with both instructors will be offered to all participants.
Taking a class with Lorraine at Castle Hill in 2019 enabled me to explore mark making and line in a new way.
I had the opportunity to be a student in one of Lorraine’s workshops several years ago and was struck by how insightful and transformative her instruction and exercises were for my own painting practice. I returned to the studio feeling refreshed and curious about ways I might experiment and broaden my visual language.
Walks in the woods at Lareau made us all slow down and look deeply.
It’s not often that one finds an opportunity to attend an art retreat with two instructors and benefit from their individual ways of approaching technique. Co-teaching with Lorraine was everything I hoped it would be - our styles and personalities blended together effortlessly to provide a rich and multi-faceted space for students to learn.
An important piece of retreat for me is to be in a beautiful and inspiring space. Lareau Farm and Inn - home of American Flatbread - is a true working farm on 25 acres with pigs and chickens and flowers and vegetables. You can stroll through the gardens and steep your senses with smells and sights. Our meals each morning and afternoon utilized flowers and vegetables from the gardens and were skillfully prepared and delicious.
Student work from our 2021 retreat at Lareau Farm & Inn.
For me, going on retreat isn’t about producing a new body of work - it’s about producing a new body of ideas. It’s about resting and being taken care of, about being with others and making new friends, and it’s about connecting more deeply and intimately with myself and my art making practice.
The historic farmhouse where we shared meals together.
As a gift to our students, Lorraine and I are offering $100 off our 2022 retreat if you took a workshop with either of us this past year. This offer is good through December 17. Please mention which of us you studied with when registering. For more information, visit lorraineglessner.wordpress.com.
And if our retreat doesn’t work for you dates-wise, be sure to check out the other two retreats she is offering at Lareau this summer - one focused on photography and the figure with Leah MacDonald and one on plein air painting with Kelly Milukas.