Gayle Kabaker is a painter, writer, teacher and visual storyteller
Jennifer Orkin Lewis and I began teaching our first week in Greece on Sept.26th after a year of planning. We were SO excited. We had a few great days in Athens. Not doing much except getting over jet lag and planning for the workshop- but we did a great two hour Airbnb experience tour.
We had a wonderful first three days of the retreat. The venue was fantastic. My (brand new to art) sister Dana came along! The sunrises were insane every day. The group was great. We had an amazing boat trip, the colors of the water! I created a fun costume for a live drawing session with Sibora who works at the venue and was a wonderful and very willing model! The variety of interpretations from all of our prompts never ceases to amaze us.  On day three, I started to feel pretty sick and by that night I had a fever and cough. I’ve had pneumonia a few times, and that’s exactly what it felt like. The venue owner, David, and his daughter Christina were so caring and took it seriously, making a doctor’s appointment for me the next day. David took me, being as sweet and kind as can be. The doctor didn’t speak much English, so David had to come into the exam room with me to interpret.
Potentially awkward—but thankfully wasn’t! The doctor listened carefully to my chest ( discreetly pulling a curtain) and sent us across the street for an x-ray. We came back with the film in hand. Yes, I had pneumonia. He gave me a prescription for antibiotics. We walked across the street to a pharmacy, got the antibiotics, and some other powder for me to take in the morning. Not quite sure what it was. It all took about two hours, cost under €100, and I felt well taken care of. Luckily, Jennifer was scheduled to teach that afternoon. We’d been trading off lessons, so I was able to rest and sleep. Thank God the antibiotics worked, so I started feeling a lot better pretty quickly. I’d had pneumonia once where they didn’t and I needed a second round, so I was a bit scared! It’s scary to be sick far away from home. Once I felt better, I was able to come back in for lessons. Jennifer did a great job taking on more while I was down. I usually jog (and when I say jog—I mean I feel like I’m jogging, but to others it might look more like really fast walking :) almost every morning for at least 30–60 minutes.  Headed out for a sunrise jog But now—no exercise and no swimming for me. I was always up early, so once I felt better, I began walking eight minutes up the road to the local café, having coffee and drawing around 7 a.m. It was all older men at that hour, sitting in the same spots each day. I secretly drew them, kind of hidden by some hanging tree ferns.
Coffee Day 1, I smiled at one of them and he didn’t smile back. So I made up that they weren’t friendly and were a bit scary. Coffee Day 2, I walked up to the counter. The barista was making a coffee for someone else and didn’t acknowledge me. He finished, gave the coffee to the waiting customer, and then began making another. He set it in front of me with a VERY slight smile. I said, “Oat latte? You remembered! That’s so nice!” Then I asked his name (Dimitri) and asked what he thought if I were to ask those old men if I could take photos of them. He said, better to take them in secret. Then he took my phone from me and snapped some photos himself.  Coffee Day 3 was Saturday—a new barista, new men, except for one guy I’d drawn three times. I got up the nerve to go to him and showed him the drawings I’d done. His face lit up! He loved it. Not scary at all.  Midweek, our group stopped for a drink in the afternoon on the way home from drawing on the beach—at the bar next to our venue. And there they were, the same old men! The owner was really nice, so I told him I’d been drawing them at coffee. He said they were actually very nice men. So on my last day, after being here for 16 days, I got up early and was drawing them by 7 a.m. (and by the way—I never draw at 7 a.m.!) I drew them for a while, then got up the nerve to show them. They were thrilled with the drawings and were SO nice. AND they let me take portrait photos that I can’t wait to paint. I got inspired to paint old men when I was alone in Essouria, Morocco last spring.  
If I hadn’t gotten sick, I’d never have had this experience, because I’d have been out jogging every morning. OK, so maybe my lesson is don’t get sick and still change things up to allow for more unexpected new experiences? Jennifer and I take turns on Day 2 and 3 of each retreat giving a “career talk”—basically how we began our careers and ended up here. While teaching in Morocco last May, we decided to let each other off the hook, not having to sit through each other’s talks anymore after hearing them about 10 times. As I was giving my talk the first week ( Greece 1), I spoke about how I’d kind of always been brave about doing things I wasn’t really qualified to do. In thinking more about this after my talk, I realized that part of my ability to feel brave is having a good support network. My parents were hugely supportive of my being an artist. My husband Peter is also an artist and so supportive of me as an artist. He’s also like my umbilical cord to home. He’s taking care of everything at home, and this makes me feel safe when I am far away. Today is his birthday. Here we are at my bother’s wedding last month when the northern lights performed for us! We were so lucky that the great photographer Art Streiber was a guest who had fun taking amazing photos of us all.
I have many cheerleaders in my life. Coaches and healers Margaret O’Connor and Chloe Ward. are such great support for me. My artist friends are hugely important to me. I’d never have started teaching workshops alone at my place in the summers if not for many of them saying, “Of course you can sell workshops on your own!” (And happily, they sell out quickly :) It’s about choosing YOUR people. The ones who see your potential and cheer you on. I love connecting people. I love networking and sharing things that have worked for me, and sharing people who have inspired and helped me. Tosha Silver’s book Outrageous Openness :Letting the Divine Take the Lead is a very important book for me, thanks to Justina Blakeney, who told me it changed her life. I read Fredrik Backman’s new book My Friends while I was sick—and OMG. Possibly the best book I’ve ever read. All artists should read it, but really, it’s a book for anyone. Teaching gives me the opportunity to give back and help others—kind of a full circle for all the support I receive. We’ve just announced our May 2026 - to Morocco! (our fourth time teaching in Morocco, and we are SO excited!) For now, we’ve only shared the details with our past groups and Patreon members. We’ll be sending all the information in our newsletters next week—but if you’d like to be in the know right now, you can join us on Patreon! I’ll end with a few paintings from the first week in Greece. I did way more paintings during the second week More on Greece Week 2 in my next newsletter. As always I love hearing from you. xo Gayle
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petak, 17. listopada 2025.
Lessons from Greece: Art, Healing, and Unexpected Connections
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My book is here!
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