The heart of this retreat is time spent creating outdoors and with nature.
Using materials gathered from the landscape alongside supplies from Emily and Tanya's personal studio collections, we'll create in settings that will have you finding creativity everywhere you look.

Our retreat venue offers many beautiful settings and shaded areas, perfect for your studio al fresco!

The natural world is endlessly beautiful, and one of the most gratifying ways we celebrate it is through photos and videos that share our unique points of view. To capture a scene in a photograph is, in a way, paying respect to the beauty you are witnessing.

In this workshop, we'll

• guide you through intuitive photography

• Discuss video techniques and methods to make this dimensional art form more accessible and exciting

• How to use objects like plans, glass, shadows, and movement to create artful photographs and videos

• Help you develop your own point of view behind the camera

• Share how both Emily and Tanya approach capturing meaningful moments of inspiration

This workshop feels like you just walked into a delicious candy store: a whole new world of color is suddenly at your fingertips as plants become intensely beautiful dyes, inks, and stains.
Learn to identify and gather pigment-rich organic materials, then explore the vibrant colors hidden in their blooms, seeds, leaves, and roots, and the chemical reactions that bring even more magic to your creativity.

We'll spend hours uncovering the beauty of natural color, creating art deeply rooted in the essence of the desert.

Tanya guides you through the art of creating your own silk scarf using flowers and plants as your palette.
We’ll thoughtfully arrange botanicals and organic dyes on silk and then watch as the magic takes over as they steam. Chemical reactions take over, colors bleed and bloom in ways nobody can fully predict, and what's revealed when you unroll the silk feels very much like abstract artwork. The whole thing feels like collaborating with nature and losing control in the best possible way.

 This workshop will forever change the way you look at rocks, minerals, and the landscape.
We'll gather natural minerals and transform them into oil paint, watercolor, acrylic, and stains for use on canvas, paper, and beyond. Using only natural, non-toxic materials, we'll create works that are as sustainable as they are beautiful. 

There is real mystery in natural pigments and the chemistry at play on your canvas. It feels like pure magic because it kind of is.

Experience the full process of making natural oil paint completely from rock to finished artwork.

We begin by collecting raw minerals and earth pigments from the landscape (and from Emily’s studio), then grind them into fine powder and bind them with cold-pressed linseed oil.

With your handmade paints ready, you'll work on canvas, discovering the extraordinary depth and texture that sets earth pigment oils apart.

This workshop takes you through the full arc of a painting and really allows your creativity to expand. There are no rules in this workshop. By now, you’ve tried everything and feel familiar with all mediums, and it’s time to play.

We'll guide you through creating abstract paintings on paper and/or canvas that capture the essence of the landscape and the emotion you're tapping into.

Another visually stunning workshop! We'll style a lush floral arrangement together under Tanya’s direction, playing with composition, color, and light (think Dutch Masters - but desert vibes) before translating it into a painting in whatever medium speaks to you.

Watercolor, oil, acrylic, ink… a combination of mediums, the choice is yours. This offers you a moment look closely and find the extraordinary in what's right in front of you.

Before abstraction had a name, Hilma af Klint was already living inside it. A painter, botanist, and deeply spiritual thinker, she created some of the most breathtaking botanical and abstract art.

Throughout this retreat, we’ll reference and draw inspiration from Hilma’s work, particularly her smaller-scale botanical studies, her ethos, and her revolutionary ideas. Prepare to be genuinely moved by this woman and her work.

The heart of this Retreat is the time we spend creating, exploring, and expanding outdoors. And, just as the year moves through seasons, so do our inner worlds and our creative lives.

Throughout the retreat, we'll discuss how to nourish your creative practice through all of life's shifts and stay connected to that renewable, magical part of yourself. These are practices that have genuinely transformed our own lives, allowed us to access lasting inspiration, and we cannot wait to share them with you.