Restore Peace Painting Retreats

I didn’t set out to build a painting retreat business.
I was trying to stabilize myself.

During an uprooting season when everything I once relied on stopped working — my instincts, my confidence, even the tools that had always helped me support others — I turned toward something quieter. I began painting. Not to make art. Not to express myself. But to feel myself beneath the noise.

For years, I painted in silence. It began with landscapes — mountains, forests, water, and sky. Later, my system shifted and drew me toward fluid art, where I poured the parts of myself I no longer needed onto, and then off, the canvas. Eventually, I found my way to portrait work, where I began painting the human form.

Throughout this entire season, time in nature remained constant. I wasn’t trying to find answers. I was trying to feel steady again. And slowly, through creative presence and time outdoors, something shifted. I began to trust myself again — not who I had been, but who I was becoming.

Creative presence did more than still me.
The act of creating occupied my mind just enough for what was emerging to be heard. It gave form to what presence alone could not yet reveal — allowing the rest of me to catch up gently, without force.

I’ve always been deeply somatic. I learn, teach, and sense through the body. Words have never been my primary way of knowing. Art became the place where truth could surface without analysis or judgment — where presence could do what thinking could not.