Finding Your Voice
Painting Your Landscape — From Paddock to Palette
with Anita West
3–10 October 2027
6 days tuition | Acrylic | Contemporary Landscape | Intermediate to Experienced
An immersive six-day painting retreat for artists ready to move beyond simply depicting the landscape and develop a more personal, authentic way of responding to it.
Residential retreat at Greenhills Art Centre, Western Australian Wheatbelt
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6 Full Days Tuition
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Acrylic Painting
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Contemporary Landscape
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Intermediate to Experienced Painters
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Maximum 12 Participants
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Residential Retreat
Finding Your Voice
How do you move beyond simply painting what you see and begin creating work that feels unmistakably your own?
Over six immersive days, acclaimed Australian landscape artist Anita West will guide you towards developing a more personal and authentic response to the landscape.
This retreat is designed for practising artists who already have some experience with acrylic paint and want to take their work further — artists who are ready to experiment, challenge familiar habits and discover new ways of interpreting the world around them.
Rather than teaching you to paint like Anita, the emphasis is on helping you understand and strengthen your own artistic voice.
You’ll explore new processes, develop more meaningful paintings, learn to assess your own work more objectively and investigate what makes a painting feel authentic to you.
There will be demonstrations and technical guidance throughout the retreat, but the larger purpose is to help you move beyond your comfort zone and discover where your own work might go next.
During the Retreat You’ll Explore
Finding Your Artistic Voice
Explore what makes your work uniquely yours and begin identifying the subjects, ideas, processes and visual language that genuinely resonate with you.
Interpreting the Landscape
Move beyond simply recording what is in front of you and consider how memory, emotion, atmosphere and personal response can influence a painting.
Developing More Meaningful Work
Look beyond technique alone and consider what you want your paintings to communicate and why particular subjects continue to draw you back.
Critiquing Your Own Work
Learn how to step back from your paintings and assess them more objectively, allowing you to recognise what is working, what needs attention and when a painting is resolved.
Elements & Principles of Art
Strengthen your ability to resolve paintings by considering composition, colour, value, line, shape, balance, movement and other fundamental elements of picture-making.
Colour
Develop your use of colour palettes and explore how colour can communicate atmosphere, emotion and a stronger sense of place.
Transparent Glazes
Experiment with transparent acrylic glazes to create depth, luminosity and subtle shifts in colour.
Experimental Processes
Explore mediums, wet and dry rags and other approaches that encourage a freer and more responsive relationship with the painted surface.
Composition
Investigate ways of arranging and interpreting the landscape rather than simply reproducing the reference in front of you.
Moving Beyond Your Comfort Zone
Challenge familiar ways of working, take considered risks and explore processes and approaches that may lead your paintings somewhere unexpected.
Building a Sustainable Art Practice
Consider the habits that support creativity — including overcoming procrastination, finding flow, developing good studio habits and maintaining momentum when you return home.
From Paddock to Palette
The Wheatbelt landscape will become part of the retreat.
During the week, Anita and the group will venture out into the surrounding landscape to observe, gather ideas and experience the character of the Wheatbelt before returning to the Greenhills studio.
This is not about producing a photographic copy of a particular view.
Instead, Anita will encourage you to consider what actually captured your attention.
Was it the colour?
The light?
The rhythm of the trees?
The openness of the land?
A particular shape, atmosphere, memory or feeling?
Back in the studio, these observations become the starting point for a more personal interpretation.
The aim is not simply to paint a place.
It is to explore what that place means to you.
Asking the Bigger Questions
An important part of Anita’s retreat is learning to think more deeply about your own work.
Why do you paint?
What continually draws you back?
What do you want your paintings to communicate?
What processes feel genuinely yours?
Where do you want your work to go next?
Anita describes this as asking the what, when, where, how and why of your art.
These conversations, combined with practical studio work, are designed to help you develop paintings with greater meaning and create an art practice that can continue evolving long after the retreat has finished.
Your Retreat Schedule
Sunday 3 October
Arrive at Greenhills Art Centre from 4pm.
Settle into your room, meet Anita and your fellow participants and enjoy dinner together before the workshop begins the following morning.
Monday 4 October
Workshop Day One
Your six-day exploration begins.
Tuesday 5 October
Workshop Day Two
Wednesday 6 October
Workshop Day Three
Thursday 7 October
Workshop Day Four
Friday 8 October
Workshop Day Five
Friday Evening — Dinner at Lake Kimberley Bar & Grill
On Friday evening, we'll head to nearby Lake Kimberley Bar & Grill at Whitegum Farm for a relaxed dinner together.
Friday dinner and drinks are not included in the retreat price and are paid directly by guests at the restaurant.
Saturday 9 October
Workshop Day Six
A final full teaching day with Anita, bringing together the ideas, processes and discoveries explored throughout the week.
Sunday 10 October
Breakfast followed by departure.
Six Days to Explore, Experiment & Develop
Across the six teaching days, you’ll move between observation, experimentation, demonstrations, individual guidance and sustained studio work.
Anita will introduce techniques and ideas including transparent glazing, wet and dry processes, acrylic mediums, colour palettes and composition.
But this is not a workshop built around everyone completing the same painting.
Your own work remains at the centre of the retreat.
You’ll have time to experiment, make mistakes, reassess, change direction and discover processes that feel natural to your own way of working.
Anita’s role is to help guide you through that process — encouraging you to move beyond familiar habits while helping you recognise the strengths already present in your work.
More Than Painting
Anita’s retreat is also about conversation.
Throughout the week there will be opportunities to talk about art, artists, ideas and the realities of maintaining a creative practice.
Anita would also like to share and discuss the work of other artists for inspiration and ideas, using presentations and images as part of the retreat.
Some of these conversations may naturally continue after dinner — one of the advantages of staying together for a residential retreat rather than attending a conventional day workshop.
It creates the time and space to think about art as well as make it.
About Anita West
Anita West is an established Brisbane-based artist renowned for her expressive and atmospheric paintings of the Australian bush.
With a career spanning more than three decades, Anita has held more than twenty-five solo exhibitions across Queensland and New South Wales and has developed a distinctive body of work centred on her deep connection to the Australian landscape.
Her work is held in numerous public, corporate and private collections, including the Parliament House Art Collection in Canberra, Broken Hill Regional Gallery Collection, Mater Children’s Hospital, Westpac Bank Hong Kong and other Australian and international collections.
In 2024 Anita won the Lethbridge Acquisitive Prize for Landscape for her painting Banksia Rain.
Her work has also received recognition through numerous major Australian art prizes, including the John Leslie Art Prize, Stanthorpe Art Prize, Calleen Art Award, Waterhouse Art Prize, Paddington Art Prize and others.
Across a long exhibition history — from Bush Landscapes and Places of My Heart to Listening to the Bush and Bush Reverie — Anita has continually explored the emotional and atmospheric possibilities of the Australian landscape.
Her paintings are less about recording a particular place than communicating an experience of it.
Anita’s Connection to the Landscape
For Anita, landscape painting is about much more than appearance.
She wants her paintings to evoke the sensation of being within the Australian bush — its atmosphere, eucalyptus, light, earth, energy and mystery.
Her work is an invitation to slow down, contemplate and reconnect with the natural world.
That same philosophy sits at the heart of this retreat.
Rather than asking participants to reproduce the landscape, Anita encourages them to consider their own emotional and visual response to it — and allow that response to shape the painting.
Meet Anita
Hear Anita talk about her art practice, her relationship with the Australian landscape and the ideas that underpin her work.
Follow Anita
Keep up with Anita’s paintings, exhibitions and studio practice:
Instagram | Facebook | Website
The Greenhills Experience — More than a Workshop
This particular retreat is especially suited to Greenhills.
During the week you’ll be able to step out into the surrounding Wheatbelt landscape and then return to a spacious studio where you can develop those observations without the interruptions of everyday life.
There is no need to drive home, prepare meals or pack away your painting materials at the end of each day.
Instead, your week can revolve around looking, thinking, painting, discussing art and spending time with other practising artists.
Meals are shared around the table, conversations continue beyond formal teaching hours, and the studio remains part of your experience throughout the retreat. On Friday evening, we'll head to nearby Lake Kimberley Bar & Grill at Whitegum Farm for dinner together.
It is time not just to make paintings — but to think about why you make them.
Your Retreat Includes:
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seven nights private accommodation at Greenhills Art Centre
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six full days tuition with Anita West
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all meals and refreshments at Greenhills, except Friday dinner
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morning and afternoon tea
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welcome dinner on arrival
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studio access throughout your stay
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demonstrations and individual tuition
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art discussions and presentations
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all linen and towels
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maximum 12 participants.
On Friday evening, the group will dine at Lake Kimberley Bar & Grill at Whitegum Farm. Friday dinner and drinks are at guests' own expense.
Who Should Attend?
This retreat is best suited to intermediate and experienced painters with some existing knowledge of acrylic painting, colour and technique.
You do not need to be an advanced professional artist.
However, because the retreat moves beyond basic painting instruction into artistic development, experimentation and individual practice, some previous painting experience will help you gain the most from the week.
Confident beginners who already have some familiarity with acrylic paint and colour are welcome to contact us to discuss whether the retreat would be suitable.
This retreat will particularly suit artists who:
want to develop a more recognisable personal style
feel their paintings have become too predictable
want to move beyond copying reference photographs literally
would like to experiment with new processes and techniques
want to become better at assessing their own work
struggle to know when a painting is resolved
want to create paintings with greater meaning
feel stuck or unsure where their work should go next
want to build stronger studio habits
or simply need uninterrupted time to reconnect with their art.
You do not need to paint like Anita.
In fact, that is precisely the point.
This retreat is about helping you paint more like you.
Materials
A detailed materials list will be provided to participants once the retreat has reached the required minimum number of bookings.
As this retreat focuses on developing your individual practice, participants will also be encouraged to bring the acrylic materials, brushes and tools they already know and enjoy working with.
Your retreat
$3,400 per person — private room
Price includes GST.
Your retreat includes six full days tuition with Anita, seven nights private accommodation at Greenhills, all meals and refreshments at Greenhills except Friday dinner, and studio access throughout your stay.
A 20% deposit secures your place. The full balance is due eight weeks before the retreat. Monthly payment plans are available by prior arrangement
Coming with a friend?
Save 10% each when sharing one of our limited twin rooms, subject to availability.
Twin Share — $3,060 per person
Independent Stay option
For participants who live locally or prefer to arrange their own nearby accommodation, a limited number of Independent Stay places are available, subject to availability.
You'll still join us for tuition, meals and refreshments at Greenhills, studio access and the social side of the retreat — you simply arrange your own accommodation or bring an approved self-contained caravan or motorhome.
Independent Stay — $2,560 per person
Price includes GST.
Friday dinner and drinks at Lake Kimberley Bar & Grill at Whitegum Farm are at guests' own expense for all accommodation options.
Find Your Voice at Greenhills
Six full days of tuition.
A week immersed in the Wheatbelt landscape.
Time to look.
Time to experiment.
Time to question.
Time to move beyond familiar habits.
And time to discover what makes your work genuinely yours.
3–10 October 2027
Minimum 8 | Maximum 12 participants
Book Your Greenhills Retreat
Complete the form below and we'll send your deposit invoice to secure your place.