Summer 2025 – Take a pilgrimage into visionary and mythological painting in the beautiful Italy, where over the course of two weeks we will explore numerous techniques in ink, oil and egg tempera drawn from the symbolists, surrealists, Renaissance, and contemporary visionary art.
It will be an opportunity to gather in artist community, encounter other people with shared interests in art, history, philosophy, imaginal or visionary art and painting technique. These diverse approaches can combine into a set of skills allowing the aspiring artist to create a personal work of depth and beauty.
Dates : Summer 2025
Accomodation and food provided in Italian splendor. We will study deep principles of layered oil painting (mischtechnik), learn about paintmaking and mediums, development of underpainting and glazing, and also enjoy togetherness with people of shared interests over a week of learning.
- Fundamental principles of painting in oil and tempera grassa
- Learn to make and control the recipes of custom paint and mediums based on traditional renaissance principles and natural ingredients
- Underpainting, optical grisaille – sculpting with light
- Glazing transparent colors in oil
- Bringing forth a world of imagination via narrative, world-building and symbolic languages
- Traditional principles of harmonic composition
- Scale and depth
- Decalcomania and other techniques of abstract textures
- Balance between control and chaos, meditation and energetic expression
Facilitators
Daniel Mirante
Bio
Daniel Mirante (Fellow of Royal Society of Arts) is a painter who through his studio practice and international teaching appointments has explored lineages of sacred art. His milestones have been as an explorer of shamanistic practices, an apprentice to Ernst Fuchs, founding faculty member and instructor at the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art, regular educator and speaker in NSW, Australia, director of www.visionary.art, an education platform and library. He is exhibiting at the Quai Branley Ethnographic Museum and pursuing postgraduate studies in art education whilst developing his first mythological symbolist book Tales of Alibraria.
Total price 900 Euros. Book in with 1/3rd deposit for Bologna MonteBello Casa for Daniel Mirante & Ainhoa Neith week-long painting retreat. Limited places. Shared rooms. Catered. Location is rural and isolated so participant must bring their personal needs (sanitary, snacks, medication, etc). Participant is responsible for arriving at nearest public transport location for pickup (easy access from Bologna city by train).
Left : Medicine Bird
Right : Chanting Down Babylon
We will be undergoing a training in the methods and materials of oil painting via underpainting and glazes embodied in the Venetian School of the Renaissance (Mantegna, Giovani Bellini, Titian, Leonardo) , exploring the expressive and spontaneous approaches of the surrealists such as Max Ernst and Brion Gysin, combined with authenticity to the philosophical and existential challenges and opportunities faced in this time on Earth. Our aim will be to send signals forward in time to the generation of people around and ahead of us, of our time and place, our values of what is important to the Earth and Stars, via the healing practice of art. This is the value of visionary art.
A Glimpse of Previous Workshops
By sharing the open studio with guides exercises and steps every day, we will share as a group a unique moment in time together to empower and focus ourselves practically as artists, in the supportive and undistracted natural setting of the remote hills of Bologna, Italy.
We will be exploring over the week artistic techniques involved in the Ernst Fuchs line of mischtechnik and all of the abundant cross-over variants. This will be our artistic practice and study. Interiorly we will be exploring light trance inducing methods via sungazing, breathwork, meditation, and stroboscopic theta-delta brainwave activation, exploring a philosophical paradigm of the arts via readings and presentations that share with the participant useful practices for translating their inner experience and subconscious into visible, transpersonal symbols and paintings.
This course is suitable for people of any age or level of artistic experience, although emotional maturity, tolerance toward each other, patience and courage to face ones learning curve are all assets in the experience.
Total price 900 Euros. Book in with 1/3rd deposit for Bologna MonteBello Casa for Daniel Mirante & Ainhoa Neith week-long painting retreat. Limited places. Shared rooms. Catered. Location is rural and isolated so participant must bring their personal needs (sanitary, snacks, medication, etc). Participant is responsible for arriving at nearest public transport location for pickup (easy access from Bologna city by train).