Join me for a relaxed drawing and watercolour day immersion into the Rose. Drawing the Rose becomes a ritual, it brings you into a deep connection with this iconic ancient flower. A flower that has informed us humans medicinally, creatively and spiritually for thousands of years - we will find something of its soul nature, love and character alive in all of us.

The artistic process shared in this workshop will give you the skills and time to observe how the rose affects you, and how to create your own sensitively informed beautiful picture. We will also be making ink from petals and incorporating the medicine, and insight this flower brings to shape our awareness. You can fully expect your art pieces and your inner senses to be shaped by the rose form and essence.

Join artist and botanical art therapist Eleanor Darley @elle_darley  in Dartmoor. Bringing many years of experience working with the Rose she will gently, expertly guide people through an artistic process so the art is alive with gesture and the soul qualities of the plant.

Cost: £175 book here

Time: 10am-4pm

Lunch: A light vegetarian meal provided

Materials: You will be asked to bring Roses - from the garden, or bought, a special rose from home, or one that has particularly caught your eye.

We will be drawing and using ink and watercolour plus you will be making ink from the Rose petals.

A materials list for the art will be sent on booking.

DRAWING THE SNOWDROP - a journey of early Spring awakening.

A process of change. A melting, a warming, a letting go, a preparation to generate a feeling of inner warmth, renewal, revival and connection as the light shifts, and we reach the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox - there is movement in the stillness.

These yearly rhythms of light and dark are in our body chemistry, in our soul life and if you observe carefully, they are alive in our memory, culture, and very much in the flora and fauna that are around us.

The snowdrop is a plant, particular to this time. What can the snowdrop show you? Help you with? Through its form, gesture, essence? Can it ignite some fire, some imaginative thinking?

Click image below for more info & to book.

Connect to medicinal plants through art

Join The School of Botanical Arts for a day of botanical art practise in the lush medicinal herb and flower gardens at Wyse Worts organic plant nursery

Botanical art has a long history of being used alongside recording and researching the medicinal properties of plants. This workshop will develop your understanding and knowledge of the plants in our gardens by connecting with them through drawing. You will experience how the artistic process itself can bring you into contact with the medicinal characteristics and nature of each plant.

You will be guided through observational and imaginative techniques to develop your artistic skills. Free up your creativity with confidence and build your own unique relationship with the plants you choose to draw.

Taking the time to draw a plant is an unforgettable experience. You will never struggle to identify or remember its name, but will instead carry its medicine deep in your body and your memory.

This will be a really lovely day of herbal exploration and a great opportunity to experience a day in this amazing project in Dartington where plants are intentionally grown for medicine - it will be healing, informative and a chance for you to strengthen your intuition and art skills.

Saturday
10am-1pm
£55 (a small materials list will be sent on booking)

Tutor: Eleanor Darley makes our relationship with plants the centre of her work as an artist and art therapist. She brings an in depth knowledge of how plants inform the creative process and consequently how art reveals the characteristics of plants and their medicine. She brings the work alive demonstrating through examples of art history, observation skills and imaginative techniques developed in her teaching and art therapy. She trained in traditional medicine in Mexico, Anthroposophical therapeutic art, and is founder of The School of Botanical Arts.
www.eleanorsara.com

Enquiries: artsbotanical@gmail.com

A little about wyse worts..

Wyse Worts is a small independent plant nursery based in Dartington, near Totnes set up by Melissa Harvey who grows a range of medicinal and culinary herbs and  wildflowers. All plants are grown on site organically, many from her own saved seeds, or seeds bought from small companies. She uses re-used or recycled and recyclable pots, peat free compost and little else.

They have areas of herbs and wildflowers growing in different habitats, as well as some beds specifically growing herbs for harvesting and seed saving. "

The symphony of Spring is well and truly underway with the most delicate of flower forms, pinks, white’s, yellows, and sprinkling of violets. Come on Sunday morning, 2nd April and be led on a drawing journey that will bring you into deep observation and direct experience of the nature of flower forms and their effect on us. This will be relaxed, unpressured and a gentle guide to creating work that brings you some awareness of the wellbeing benefits and insights from a botanical art process.

Choose Spring flowers of your choice, it is online so you can be at home. You will be introduced to techniques and ways of looking at plants that can deepen your knowing and connection. We will also look at the work of a few other artists like Ellsworth Kelly, Rory McEwan, Van Gogh and Georgia O’Keeffe.

The session will be recorded and available for view until 12th April if you can’t make it this Sunday.

zoom link, info and simple materials list sent on booking

Spring is here (just!) primroses and celandines and narcissi and hyacinth’s are poking their heads up into the garden

Join a botanical art workshop on Saturday morning 6th March to experience how botanical art can be medicine, how drawing connects to the medicine of the plant and how the whole artistic process with plants can bring you well-being. Faciltated by Eleanor Darley artist and transpersonal art counsellor.

Through my therapeutic art practise and my own study I have found that through art you can have a direct experience of the medicine of the plant you choose to draw. The forms inform you, and inform your art.

You can learn from the plants themselves by drawing them. Also, the artistic process and observational practises applied when making botanical art connects you with the life force available to us in nature, and this can be very restorative.

This has an effect on the work you produce, and we will use artistic techniques that will help you to retain a sense of aliveness in your art work. So many pictures end up flat but this teaching will help you capture the spirit and gesture of the plant.

"One does not work by mere imitation, copying a model, but one recreates by immersing oneself in that force by which Nature herself created and shaped man. One forms as Nature herself forms" Rudolf Steiner

In this workshop we will lead with examples and demonstration but with plenty of guided personal drawing time because it is completely experiential. What we will cover: 

• Introduction with a little art history touching on artists who have learnt through botanical observation

• Observation drawing techniques and the imaginative practise

• Working in detail and working with gesture

• Inspirations, learnings, feedback and questions

• How to develop your practise

Materials: 

• Bring a bunch of flowers, herbs or pick a couple of blooms from the garden. Anything that attracts your attention. Try to see which plant or flower is already speaking to you, or bring one that you’ve always liked.

• Art materials: drawing pencils, fineliner pens, charcoal, ink, watercolours, round paintbrushes of varying sizes (preferential), A3 cartridge or water-colour paper (I always advice good quality because you always then have the option of framing it)

Online workshop: £40 zoom details sent on booking.

The session will be recorded so you can revisit the information.

Book here: https://www.eleanorsara.com/xochicalli-shop/botanical-art-as-medicine-online-workshop-6th-march-10am-1230pm

Any questions: artsbotanical@gmail.com

Join artist Eleanor Darley and The School of Botanical Arts for a “Botanical Art As Medicine” free wellbeing session at Dilston Physic Garden at 10am Sunday 28th Feb.

No experience necessary - this will be an introduction drawing techniques that can bring you into contact with the medicine of plants. This will be held on their Facebook and Instagram pages, no registration necessary. More details here on their virtual wellbeing events page

Working with the White Lily Essence - A meditation and women’s circle

A teaching on the history of the White Lily in its association with the Holy Mother spirit; a small introduction on how to use the flower essence and a meditation to work profoundly with the essence to receive healing attention for or to connect to your femininity, sexuality, womb. The intention for this is to provide a safe loving container to work with the essence reverently and consciously. Plant essences are non toxic but can bring deep healing, and sometimes we need support around that.

This will be for women just before the new moon. Sunday morning 10am (UK).

Registration is essential. Please register here

And then I will send you the Zoom link

£7 via paypal to artsbotanical@gmail.com

If you would like to buy the essence in preparation you can here

Participants are asked to take full responsibility for their wellbeing and if you have any acute trauma connected to your womb it’s all welcomed but can you please just let me know in the registration. With love.