Anna Kwiecinska
creator of Writing by the Sea in Hydra
As a lifelong traveller, I constantly seek the challenge and pleasures of adapting to new cultures.
I'm happier still, when I can share this exhilaration with others.
All of my travel and experience of studying and living in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Morocco India, Sri Lanka, and building a home in Bali, come together as I research and curate a unique season of retreats each year with a passion to bring you and your desire to express yourself closer together!
We began 15 years ago in Bali, this year our program extends to Portugal, Hydra and Venice and now includes not only various forms of art-making, but also creative writing, memoir and literary retreats combining history and literature.
I was in Sri Lanka when Covid struck and happily spent the next two years settling into life there. Certainly an unplanned adventure, and not always easy, especially during a pandemic, quickly followed by a bankrupt central government and public insurrection.
However a tour "Hidden Gems" and an art retreat in Galle Fort evolved and from there my art retreats, previously confined to Bali, expanded to include Morocco and Hydra, Greece - both places that I have lived.
ART, TRAVEL and WRITING
My first travel experience, setting off for India for ten weeks, turned into a year. It set the benchmark for roads less travelled, the exhilaration of heading off without a guidebook and seeing what happened.
I taught school in Kathmandu, sailed the Maldives in a dhow before it was a 'destination', wandered over most of India and eventually returned home to finish my studies and get a ‘proper job’ as a medical technologist, always hoping that these skills would take me back to the Himalaya as a volunteer.
This sensible behaviour wasn’t to last long. A growing interest in the art history drew me to the British Institute in Florence for a year, thence to the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London for two years, where for my MA, specialised in Early Sienese Art with Dr Joanna Cannon ... this set me on a road I continue to travel ... art, art, art ....
After several years in London working in publishing, much more travel, a stint teaching in Portugal and a couple of truly hedonistic years living on the Greek island of Hydra, I again returned to Perth to throw myself wholeheartedly into the world of artists, setting up a commercial art gallery which I ran for 17 years, presenting emerging and established artists, both in Australia and Asia, eventually specialising In Australian Indigenous art.
Every year I returned to India for several weeks, until, discovering a collection of old wooden hand-printing blocks in a farmer’s loft near Jaipur lead me to create ‘Woven Cargo’ textile designs. My passion for all-things India evolved into designing small group tours and since 2007 I've lead my own tours to India, Ethiopia and Morocco, where I have lived and studied off and on since 2017
Creative Living Retreats began in Bali. They are painting and meditation/yoga holidays held for a week at Villa Nilaya, a grass-roofed villa I built in 2010 in beautiful East Bali.
These have developed into an annual series with new teachers each year, which is 2026 also includes Portugal and Venice.
see all retreats and tours ; www.annakwiecinska.com
favourite quote?
"Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened"
The Caravan of Dreams by Idriss Shah
One of Idries Shah’s most-loved and seminal works, capturing in a collection of tales from the Middle East and Central Asia, the magic, wonder and power of Eastern lore.
Caravan of Dreams is a magical anthology that brings the reader closer to the spiritual essence of the Middle Eastern and Islamic wisdom traditions.
Collected by one of the world’s leading experts on Sufi thought and psychology, it distils the essence of Eastern thought in a feast of legends, sayings, poems, proverbs and anecdotes, and teaching-stories, ‘intended to lay a basis of knowledge about Sufism and its characteristic methods of thought'.
Through this work, Shah builds a picture of a single civilizational consciousness, whose rich and soul-sustaining narratives are, ‘a part of the most priceless heritage of mankind.’