Calling on all budding artists!

The Buddhist Retreat Centre

Calling on all budding artists!

Art in Constantia Forest, in the Ixopo hills and on Durban’s Berea:

After a recent Sumie art retreat one of the participants, Craig Meltzer, wrote us this delightful e-mail:.

“Thank you for a most memorable, valuable, life-changing opportunity to participate in the workshop we attended…..I always tend to lag behind my family - taking photos of what I see. After this workshop, I am going to lag behind much further as I look, with new eyes, at each leaf and its construction and orientation.”

This is indeed the kind of transformation the early Chinese and Japanese artists talked about: that the ancient practice of Brush Painting (Sumie) and Pen & Ink sketching triggers a subtle shift in the way we experience the world around us. We then derive more joy and aesthetic pleasure from what our senses, particularly our eyes, bring to us - even the simplest things. This is because Sumie and sketching free us from that obsessive self-preoccupation that tends to dominate our lives as we grow older - when nothing particularly new or exciting seems to be happening anymore; when we become locked into staleness and maintain that we have seen it all many times before. We don’t want to grow old like that, do we?

Just like we cannot inhale again the same breath we have just taken, so a moment of observing the moving shadow of a shrub on a wall can never be repeated: not that shadow at that moment. Because everything that happens is unique and fleeting. This ability to engage the essentials of things here and now - their inner nature rather than its surface appearance, is the kernel of Buddhist practice: to be wholeheartedly present at every moment of our lives. Meditation facilitates this – as does sketching and brush painting, and as we will be doing in these workshops.

Durban:

Louis will conduct the following Sumie and Pen & Ink Sketching workshops at the home of Chrisi and Louis at 24 Bemersyde Road, off Stephen Dlamini (Essenwood Road), Morningside, Durban.

For more information email: . 

Sumie – Japanese Brush Painting

Participants will be introduced to the classical themes and brushstrokes of this 25 centuries-old type of Eastern art, using the traditional deer-hair brushes and solid pine-soot ink which we will learn to liquefy on a suzuri – a hollowed-out slate, Tools are provided or sets can be bought.
Louis van Loon | Weekend: March 25 and 26

Pen & Ink Sketching

You don’t have to be or become an artist to be able to sketch what is in front of you.  Everybody can see that some things are shorter than others or to the left or right of something else.  So you simply draw it like that.  You don’t have to be - or become - an artist to do that.  All you need is one eye and two fingers.  Participants will be taken through a series of practice sessions in this type of “Seeing-Drawing” after which they will draw a variety of subjects, from still life through to landscape scenes and portraits - all in the space of a weekend. Sketching is one of the loveliest of skills anybody can acquire. You can take your pen and sketchbook anywhere and experience what it is like to be truly present in where you are.
Louis van Loon | Weekend: April 1 and 2

Ixopo

Pen & Ink Sketching

You don’t have to be or become an artist to be able to sketch what is in front of you. Everybody can see that some things are shorter than others or to the left or right of something else. So you simply draw it like that. You don’t have to be - or become - an artist to do that. All you need is one eye and two fingers. Participants will be taken through a series of practice sessions in this type of “Seeing-Drawing” after which they will draw a variety of subjects, from still life through to landscape scenes and portraits - all in the space of a weekend. Sketching is one of the loveliest of skills anybody can acquire. You can take your pen and sketchbook anywhere and experience what it is like to be truly present in where you are.
Louis van Loon | Weekend: July 21-23

Raku Pottery and Sumie (Japanese Brush Painting)  

This retreat held at the BRC has an infusion of joy and dynamism about it: pinch pots are moulded, a Chinese tea  ceremony is conducted, meditation is held in the forest in the Buddha Boma. Each retreatant will receive a ceramic tea bowl to paint on. These bowls will be raku-fired  in the Zen Garden. Louis will show participants how to paint on mulberry paper using the traditional tools. Ingrid Adams will show how these ancient techniques can be interpreted in a contemporary world, and Tasha will fire up the kiln to  show how the interaction of  searing heat, water and sawdust  produces “accidental beauty” on the ceramic bowls.
Louis van Loon, Ingrid Adams and Tasha Hawley | 4 days: December 15-19

For more information email: 

Cape Town:

Contact Erika van Greunen to book:  Telephone: 021 786 5261;  084 604 9931; 

Raku Pottery and Sumie (Japanese Brush Painting)

Louis will team up again with Master Potter Anthony Shapiro for workshops on Raku pottery and Sumie Brush Painting at Art in the Forest, near Constantia Nek, Cape Town.  Art in the Forest is an exquisite purpose-built studio constructed in the 1950’s which regularly features exhibitions of pottery by local and international ceramists. Participants will be taught how to wield the sumie brush to produce a great variety of strokes, from the finest to the broadest washes to represent the patterns and outlines one finds in nature - from rolling hills and craggy mountains to delicate petals and leaves.
Louis van Loon, Anthony Shapiro | 3 days: May 4-6 or May 11-13

 Chrisi

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