Artist Mentorship: A Visual Artist Retreat with Billie Bourgeois

Artist Mentorship: A Visual Artist Retreat with  Billie Bourgeois

Get ready for a unique weekend at The Lodge at Sweetwater Studios, diving into intuitive painting with the incredible Billie Bourgeois. 

Your Journey: Bring your art supplies, find your spot, and let's create. Billie, with over 50 years of expertise, will be right there, offering personalized guidance. It's about connecting with your subject on a deep level, expressing your experiences in nature and intuition.

Guidance Up Close: Throughout the weekend, Billie will rotate among artists, providing one-on-one mentorship. Share your journey, and let Billie guide you to new dimensions in your work. Whether you're a seasoned artist or just starting, this is a chance to elevate your craft with a master.

Witness the Process: Experience Billie's magic as she reveals her mark-making techniques. Billie’s introduction will be a lecture/demonstration discussing visual space, her inspirations, and her approach to mark-making and abstract painting. 

For this personal artist retreat, bring your own supplies, set up your workstation, and create, while Billie rotates to each artist and meets one-on-one with artists,  listening to where you’ve been, where you are now, and where you may want to go in your artwork offering inspiration, suggestions, challenges, techniques, and guidance to get you there.

The Weekend Unveiled:

Friday:

• 3:00 PM: Check-In, mingle with fellow artists, and get your workstation set up
• 6:00 PM: Opening Dinner (feel free to BYOB, no alcohol is sold on site)
• 7:00 PM: Meet Billie Bourgeois: Gather for an introduction, meet Billie, and see her art and technique

Saturday:

• 9:00 AM: Breakfast
• 10:00 AM: Work Session:  Begin your first mentor session with Billie's guidance
• 12:30 PM: Lunch
• 1:30 PM: Work Session 2: Continue creating with Billie's guidance
• 3:00 PM: Gentle Afternoon Yoga for Creative Flow
• 6:00 PM: Dinner
• 7:30 PM: Open Art Talk

Sunday:

• 9:00 AM: Breakfast
• 10:00 AM: Final Work Session: Wrap up ideas with Billie
• 12:00 PM:  Open Art Talk
• 1:00 PM: Check-out

About Your Host:

 Billie Bourgeois 

Bourgeois was born in New Orleans, Louisiana during WWII., the oldest of six children, each of whom are musicians or artists. Growing up with stifling humidity, rich cuisine, and a strong experience of family created the unique environment for nurturing creative fluency. Her spiritual upbringing planted within her a sense of the sacred and mystical and provided fertile ground for an already natural instinct for art.

For Bourgeois there must be a relationship between form and content. She is always concerned with the composition and formal aspects of the work, balanced with subjects derived from nature and intuition. She is most at home with suggestions of gesture and strong personal mark-making. Her goal is response to the subject, not so much representation.

 Background 

• B.A. Education  St. Mary’s Dominican College (now Loyola University), N.O. LA;
• M.F.A. Painting and Drawing, LSU;
• Certified Master Teacher for Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
• Since 1998 studied with many nationally recognized artists at Mississippi Art Colony;
• Since 1966 a variety of teaching experiences including: Elementary, High School, Graduate School Teaching Assistantship,
• Presently teaching private studio classes and regional workshops in Drawing, Painting and Mixed Media.
• For several years Bourgeois has been on the faculty of Abbey Art Works at St Joseph Abbey in Covington, LA

 "My Creative Process" 

"Starting a painting is the most fun and most terrifying activity I allow myself to do!  A blank surface is so beautiful and so sublime. Who am I to adulterate it with my haphazard marks? But I just can’t resist the fun of scribbling, finger painting, brush dabbing, collaging, scraping, and stenciling to dance with the emerging image, letting each mark inform the next one.

This is called Intuitive Abstract Painting. I like to refer to it as Inside/Out painting because I’m actually giving my audience a glimpse into what makes me me.

That's pretty scary!

The painting is my playmate who thrills me and frustrates me all at the same time! It’s a true love/hate relationship all the way.

My process involves photographing the painting at different points in the process. I use the flip tools on my cell phone camera to see the image in a different scale as well as from different directions. Sometimes I can look at an unresolved painting for a year and suddenly realize a solution. Sometimes, however, I have to destroy the whole image, scrape it down and find a new approach. There are many paintings in my studio that are in this process. Eventually one or two will emerge as complete. And so it continues for me."