Puglia Art Retreat with Sally Ellis – September 2026

Day 1 – Arrival & Welcome Travel day. Following transfer from either Brindisi or Bari airport, Carlo and Miriam will welcome us to Masseria Specula and settle us into our beautiful rooms for the start of our creative week: Unpack, unwind, and take in the surroundings. In the evening, we will enjoy a welcome meal together, with local wine, fresh seasonal food, and wonderful company. A perfect way to ease into the retreat.

Day 3 – Letting Go After a fabulous breakfast, we’ll start the day by prepping three boards each, so that no single piece feels too precious or isolated. One will take inspiration from still life, one from the landscape, and one will include elements of architecture or buildings. You’re not limited to three, this is just the start. Today’s focus: losing expectation. No planning. No pressure. Just putting paint down with the intention to express, not impress. You’ll revisit techniques from the day before, now adding dry media and allowing your process to evolve intuitively. We’ll break for a fresh, seasonal lunch before continuing our exploration. In the evening, we’ll head out to a local restaurant, deepening the connections and conversations that naturally bloom in the company of creative souls. Let your only expectations be good food, great wine, new friends, and laughter.

Day 5 – Doing the Work This is a full, glorious day of painting, with only a pause for a lovely group lunch. We’ll spend the day developing your boards and paper pieces, with plenty of one-to-one guidance from me and encouragement from Lucy, my wonderful assistant. You’ll be reminded often: it’s just paint! Troubleshooting and editing will be collaborative, with group input helping you see new possibilities. This is where your work starts to shift, evolve, and feel truly yours. The early evenings are yours to rest, or maybe a sunset bike ride or a trip to the beach? As always, we’ll reconvene for a relaxed dinner with wine and a good chat.

Day 7 – Resolution & Celebration Today we begin to bring our paintings toward a natural resolution. Not rushing, not overworking, just editing, refining and simplifying. I’ll encourage you to stay playful and curious. Ask "what if?" instead of "can I?" Let your paintings breathe and we’ll pause for lunch, with time to chat and reflect. By late afternoon, you may have pieces you’d like to frame, I’ll bring a few so you can see how beautifully they come to life. Just a note: boards will be max 40x40cm, they are 3mm hardboard or similar, and paper up to 50x60cm (which can be rolled into tubes). Keep your luggage in mind! As the sun sets, we’ll gather for a celebratory cocktail evening, with live music from local musicians and a final feast with wine, a joyful, soulful way to honour everything you’ve created, felt, and shared.

Day 2 – Noticing Today is all about tuning in and beginning gently. We’ll wander around our surroundings, noticing objects, light, shadow, shape, and, most importantly, colour. Take time to observe what you're drawn to: the buildings, the plants, the sky, the atmosphere. You’ll choose a few small objects that catch your eye. These will be our springboards, exploring how they relate to one another and how we can use them to develop compositions. This isn’t about drawing them perfectly; it’s about breaking them down into line, shape, form and your own expressive marks to begin abstracting what you see. After a glorious lunch, we’ll gather for the afternoon workshop to explore the principles that make a painting work. We’ll explore working with inks on beautiful acrylic paper—expect to get messy! Don’t wear your best holiday clothes! In the evening, we’ll share a relaxed dinner with wine at the Masseria.

Day 4 – Gathering Inspiration in Grottaglie We’re off to Grottaglie, a town rich in art and tradition, known for its beautiful ceramics. A few hours to roam and absorb: take your sketchbook, or just sit at a café, people-watch, soak up the sun and the textures around you. Visit the potteries, taste something local, breathe in the atmosphere as inspiration is everywhere. We’ll return to the Masseria mid afternoon, where we’ll explore composition, perspective, and proportion. We’ll begin developing ideas sparked by the morning’s exploration, leaning gently into abstraction and personal response rather than perfect replication. The evening is another beautiful shared meal with wine under the stars.

Day 6 – A Day in Lecce After breakfast, we’ll head to Lecce, the “Florence of the South.” This breathtaking city is a creative feast: Baroque architecture, Roman amphitheatre, churches, palaces, vibrant piazzas, and more. Spend the day sketching, photographing, tasting, wandering—and absorbing. We’ll enjoy a spot of lunch in town before heading back for a workshop focused on bringing depth and space into your work. We’ll look at how your techniques can now translate to buildings, trees, streets, and landscape, layering the personal with the observational. Whether it’s a fig in the foreground or a distant dome, this is about capturing how a place feels. In the evening, we’ll gather for another delicious dinner and local wine at the Masseria.

Enjoy breakfast together, exchange any last contacts and catch the 10 am transfer to Brindisi airport arriving there around 11am & Bari airport about 12pm. Please note that the Masseria is very much in the heart of rural Puglia. As such the majority of our trips will be via mini bus with the journeys ranging from 15 to 60 minutes in duration. All transportation is covered in the cost of your retreat