Visual Arts

Watercolour and the Art of Seeing

With David McEown

May 7 - 11, 2025
Hollyhock Cortes Island
Book now and get 10% off accommodation prices. Offer valid until Feb 5, 2025.

Explore watercolour’s magical flowing spontaneity and essential techniques as you paint directly from nature. Enhance your perception, way of “seeing”, and connectedness to the earth with this travel-friendly medium. Enjoy a dynamic watercolour demonstration; exploring paint as a form of meditation and play. Uncover the secret hydrodynamics of watercolour paint and the brush work manipulation […]

Beacon Hill Park by Emma Fitzgerald from "Hand Drawn Victoria" (Spring 2024, Appetite of Penguin Random House)

Sketch by Sketch: connecting with the world through drawing

With Emma FitzGerald

May 16 - 21, 2025
Hollyhock Cortes Island
Book now and get 10% off accommodation prices. Offer valid until Feb 14, 2025.

Learn to sketch without fear of making mistakes! Join celebrated author/illustrator, Emma FitzGerald as she leads participants through a series of exercises that build confidence and improves observation skills, while allowing for the happy accidents that make a drawing that speaks from the heart. Using pen and watercolour paint, and working both together and independently […]

Contemplative Mind, Spontaneous Brush: Ink, Colour and Japanese Washi Papers

With Heather Midori Yamada

June 22 - 27, 2025
Hollyhock Cortes Island
Book now and get 10% off accommodation prices. Offer valid until Mar 23, 2025.

Relax body, breath and mind with short guided meditations and simple perceptual exercises. Follow brushwork demonstrations using Japanese sumi ink and watercolour on various Japanese washi papers (provided). Inspired by the natural beauty of Cortes Island, we will explore  mixed media approaches of layering, tearing and collaging. Deep intuitive and directed studies lead to personal […]

Nature Paints Itself

With Jeremy Herndl

July 25 - 30, 2025
Hollyhock Cortes Island
Book now and get 10% off accommodation prices. Offer valid until Apr 25, 2025.

What if the world created us humans to speak its names, sing its rivers and winds? What if nature paints itself, using our deft human hands and the tactility of sight to emulate its textures, colours and spaces? In this workshop we shall enter the space of nature, the garden, forest and ocean and paint […]

Locus Amoenus: Exploring Organic and Artificial Systems in Art


With Rebecca Brewer and Veit Laurent Kurz

July 25 - 30, 2025
Hollyhock Cortes Island
Book now and get 10% off accommodation prices. Offer valid until Apr 25, 2025.

Together we navigate an urgent inquiry and reflect on dynamic processes of renewal and the power of generative frameworks in the organic and digital realm: How can we, as physical beings in an increasingly digital world, reclaim the intimate, tactile gestures of our hands? Can we react to the vast, almost cosmic scale of artificial […]

Science, Art, Sound & the Sacred

With Merlin Sheldrake and Cosmo Sheldrake

July 30 - August 3, 2025
Hollyhock Cortes Island
Book now and get 10% off accommodation prices. Offer valid until Apr 30, 2025.

Explore the entanglements between science, art, sound, and the sacred in a beautiful, wild setting. What we call art and science both arise from our faculties of imagination, wonder, and curiosity. We will spend part of our time outdoors – in gardens, on seashores and in forests – connecting with the more-than-human world and bringing […]

Listening to Fish and Water: The Art of Survival

With Zoe Todd

October 2 - 6, 2025
Hollyhock Cortes Island
Book now and get 10% off accommodation prices. Offer valid until Jul 3, 2025.

UNCONFIRMED DESCRIPTION What lessons can we learn about transformation from fish, water, and other inter-connected oceanic and river beings or ecosystems? As Dr. Leroy Little Bear says, fish have survived multiple calamities on Earth over half a billion years. He urges us to ask the fish for guidance on how to navigate our current moment. […]