Join The School of Botanical Arts and Heartfelt Herbs for a day of botanical art practise in the lush, verdant herb gardens at Rookery Farm on the outskirts of Bristol.
Botanical art has a long history of being used alongside recording 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 no longer struggle to identify or remember its name, but will instead carry its medicine deep in your memory.
This will be a delightful day of herbal exploration and a chance for you to strengthen your intuition and art skills.
Rookery Farm has extensive gardens with meadows, ponds and herb beds that have been beautifully cultivated over the last 30 years by Paddy Dadd and her daughter Susie. One of the founders of The West of England Herb Group, Paddy’s legacy lives on in this beautiful garden. The workshop offers a unique opportunity to experience a day on this cherished land. In exchange for using these wonderful gardens, a donation will be made to the community project: Herbalists without Borders Bristol. (https://bristolhwb.org )
Saturday May 25th
10am-4pm
(a small materials list will be sent on booking)
Tutors:
Belle Benfield weaves the power of plants into her creative and healing practices as an artist, a herbalist and a health coach. Her award-winning artwork has been written about in The New York Times and exhibited internationally. Illustrator of The Sensory Herbal Handbook, Belle brings the tools of Sensory Herbalism alive through drawing, giving you the opportunity to open and develop your connection with plant medicine in your own unique, deeply personal way.
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 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 which is based on a traditional and contemporary practise, and the acknowledgment of the medicinal properties of plants, and their effect on our awareness.