I Can't Wait to Travel Again

I miss travelling! I’ve always loved to travel especially to wild and remote places but living on an artist’s unsteady salary, I’ve learned to find inexpensive ways to travel. Several years ago, I discovered artist residencies, which provide accommodation and small studio spaces. These are available to artists all over the world, some of which are free depending on acceptance of your application, others cost a small amount. I prefer ones that are remote but provide accommodation to a small group of artists rather than just one person. The interaction with artists from other countries is a stimulating, enlightening and enriching experience.

St. John's Newfoundland 2019

After I’d been teaching painting classes for several years in various parts of Canada, the US, as well as in Sweden and Iceland, I had the idea to combine my love of teaching with my intense desire to help reconnect artists to nature, along with deepening my own relationship with nature. We’re all disconnected from nature. That’s why the earth is in such crisis. What role can artists play in this crisis? Because every artist has a wide range of connections and exposure for their work and ideas, I thought that if I could help artists to deepen their connection and recognize their oneness with the earth perhaps that joy, that love would be passed on to their students and their audience. Along with my love of travel, this idea is what drove me to create Workshops in Wild Places, a travel workshop project where I organize and lead small groups of artists to various remote locations in the world three or four times per year.

In these workshops, my intention is to teach various ways of becoming consciously aware of our connection to nature: spending time outdoors, sitting and walking mindfully, meditating, and through related writing and painting exercises, aiming to take attention off our human-centered-selves, and focus on our nature-selves, becoming one with nature and the world. The artist Gaye Oxford writes that travel to these remote places, “invites wild and soul to dance together” and then we carry that dance into painting.

Tofino, BC Canada November 2019

Tofino BC, Canada 2019

Newfoundland, Canada June 2019

Dunskey, Scotland 2019

Dunskey Garden, Scotland 2019

"We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic to creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But everything in our mind has changed and that changes everything." Jonah Lehrer

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