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Italy:
Taking the boat to the Thangka Painting Retreat
Painting Buddhas in Northern Italy
My long thangka painting retreat is held each year in Arco, Trento (Northern Italy). Participants come from many different countries and there are many ways of getting there.
You can for example fly to Verona or Milan and travel from there by train and bus.
Lake Garda
This year I flew with some of my Dutch students -Josephine, Marie, Dory and Doretta- from The Netherlands to Verona to go to the Tibetan art retreat.
Next we decided to take the boat over the Garda Lake, as the thangka retreat is close to the top of the lake.
From the bottom to the top of the lake
There is a slow and a fast boat that run a few times a day.
We decided to take the slow boat, that takes four hours all the way from the bottom of the lake at Peschiera di Garda to all the way to the top of the lake at Riva del Garda.
3 Longevity Deities
At Peschiera we met up with Audry from Canada, who would travel with us to the thangka course. She really wanted to learn how to draw and paint White Tara, as she’s one of the 3 Longevity Deities, which was the subject of this years’ long course, where you learned how to draw or paint one or more Long Life Buddhas according to the Tibetan Buddhist Thangka tradition: White Tara, Amitayus and Ushnisha Vijaya (Tib.: Namgyelma):
Colorful villages
The trip over the Garda lake takes four hours and only cost €15,10. As the boat is very slow we immediately get in a state of relaxedness -which is such a lovely break from our busy lives- and during the trip we enjoy the gorgeous scenery.
How I love Italy!
The boat stops at the most beautiful and colorful villages, where people hop on and off. The boat trip is a vacation in itself.
From Riva to the Thangka Painting Retreat
The boat takes us all the way to Riva del Garda (see above) , the pittoresque village on top of the lake. We spent some time there and ate a great pizza before we shared a cheap taxi to our retreat place Kushi Ling, which is only about a 20 minutes drive. It’s up in the mountains, on a beautiful place of land, surrounded by olive trees.
We met up with the other students that arrived at Kushi Ling and what followed was a great 10 days of art, Buddhism, meditation, wonderful people, hikes through the olive fields, amazing Italian food and lots of JOY…
> To view more pictures of this retreat go to the thangka painting facebook page
> To stay informed on future Thangka courses in Italy subscribe to the Italian Newsletter
Do you want to learn how to paint a thangka?
> Come join us in our next Thangka Painting Retreat in Italy!
