Three workshops in Tolentino

La Rancia is a Twelth Century castle near Tolentino in Le Marche. These are images from my workshops where adults were seven year olds and children their fellow artists. Art attacks and jungles (yet to come)

She is meditating on her image, or dozing, so we just left her alone

Group paintings in Art Attack game

Age group five to sixty

More on starstone.org

For more info on our exciting workshops write to Michael michael@starstone.org

Men in White Gloves

Beware of them, my mum always told me...but I jest.
Colin Tracy, Steve Bray (the author of Photography and Zen) and I, shared an exhibition in Marmaris, Turkey. It was great to be fussed over and welcomed in such a heart felt way and we wish we could have stayed longer. The gallery is superb as you can see and I think it was the nicest opening I've ever experienced. In fact it was.

Stephen and Irem the most perfect hosts and the Turkish guests so sincere and charming.
I have this idea of buying a boat and living there ;O)
You can see us on TV tonight (Wed) at 630pm UK time
Wearing white gloves

Michael

BIG PAINTING

       BIG PAINTING, SEPTEMBER 11-14
   

            ..rediscovering your unique creativity

                                      With Michelle Rumney and Michael Eldridge


Can you remember your childhood days when every minute was a wondrous realm of imagination and you were totally absorbed in the depth of each moment? Imagine, once again, finding within yourself a colourful creative garden of spontaneity and intuition . . .

Art makes art; creativity feeds creativity. Want to get all that amazing stuff out of your head and into the world? To share with the world? StarStone will show you how. And we do it with a lot of fun and laughter!

Our BIG PAINTING workshops provide simple ways to help you rediscover the original source of your creativity and to know that is it possible to live from a secure place within yourself that permits you to act from your own uniqueness. You paint BIG and thus become BIG in your imagination and love of creativity

You'll experience new ways of self expression and rediscover the precious core of your creativeness, which has always been there waiting to be re-awakened.


Ryanair flights to Ancona and Pescara are low low this week. But be quick!



'Ideas which stay in the head, die in the head'
                                                   ...Delacroix
        
                    What better way to welcome Springtime?

                                        Your creativity matters.

Michael at Starstone

Coaching and the creative mind

                       the Sibillini mountains, our summer playground in Le Marche

I'm a guest speaker at the ICF Global Conference in Malmo Sept 18-20 on the subject of creativity, and how it is what everybody is talking about and yet few know how to do; how to enter this enchanting parallel world.

And here in Italy I am running a seminar (May 29 to June 1) where, if you are already a Creativity Coach, or aspire to be one, this will prove to be a fascinating voyage into the inner world of the creative artist. An opportunity to experience for yourselves the wondrously contradictory labyrinths of the creative mind, our working territory, where you will paint, you will write, you will get lost down the rabbit hole of creativity and be rescued.

read on ....

Michael at STARSTONE

info@starstone.org

Fotografia e meditazione

 

 Con Mauro Magrini

LA CHIAVE DELLA CREATIVITA’ 
Luglio 3 a 6

 La meditazione è una chiave per accedere alla creatività. Nello stato meditativo, nell’apertura a ciò che ci sta attorno e nella presenza all’attimo, si creano le condizioni ideali per vedere la realtà con i nostri occhi, sgombra da condizionamenti e preconcetti e per accedervi con la nostra sensibilità entrando in simbiosi con l’Unità. In questo stato la nostra creatività è capace di esprimersi in maniera originale e corrispondente a noi stessi.

 Fotografare in questo stato significa aprire in nostro terzo occhio, essere capaci di cogliere quello che realmente ci colpisce, nella modalità estetica più consona alla nostra sensibilità artistica.

Diventiamo un tutt’uno con ciò che fotografiamo e l’immagine diventa realmente espressione di noi stessi.

Nel workshop saranno sperimentate queste condizioni e questo approccio alla fotografia, per renderla più consapevole e più affine al nostro essere.

Mauro Magrini 
A starstone

Photography and Zen

Steve's going viral, I'm sure of it. His new book 'Photography and Zen' has just been published, so check it out on this Amazon link.

And remember too that our retreat 'Zen and the Art of Photography' with Natasha Lythgoe is in October this year.

A year full of Zen
A blog full of links

And what's more.. Stephen Bray, Colin Tracy and I have our photographic show in Marmaris, Turkey just about the time that the hardcover of he book is ready.

Michael at starstone
michael@starstone.org

The magic of words

Creative Discovery Weekend; Word and image

Word and Image;  May 15 to 18 and September 18 to 21

Ages ago, Colin Pink and I initiated our Word and Image workshops. Could have been a hundred years back but it was just five, or six;  my exaggeration a vain attempt to give weight to our accumulated wisdom. We began them at our famous Tiger Eagles retreats which are held in all sorts of exotic places but also France (slight jest here). And an extra famous one in Italia, that's two of us in this photo of the Gola D'infernacio, 'The Throat of Hell', in the Sibillini mountains, a favourite inspiration venue.
As we play in time, words and images collide together and create something manifestly greater than what they ever were or could be by themselves. Haiku, that marvellous liberator; that poetic device which colours like a paintbrush over a freshly prepared canvas of the imagination; the magic of words; that you can work with them as easily as you can with shapes and colours.
 And then...Playing with words, exploring the joy of liberating words from their everyday use. And storytelling; expressing ourselves as a language opens up within our minds, where words and then images begin to take on lives of their own, part of and apart from ourselves..
You will amaze yourselves with the way you learn to open up an avalanche of creativity; so much magical stuff hidden inside.
This emotive weekend is also, by its very nature, about laughing, daring ; meeting each other on a different plain and sharing thoughts and ideas.
This is what we did, is what we do.
And in Italy, that anarchic country where nothing makes sense, but where the senses run free, liberated from any constricting rationality.
Come along if you can, if you dare.
In the meantime read on my friends, read on