Liberate Your Inner Artist
At the Art Monastery, we guide heart-centered creatives to dissolve blocks, merge art with spiritual practice, and cultivate a joyful, fearless expression that feels authentically yours.
Are you an Artmonk?
Do your fingers itch to create?
Do you suspect your art-making could be a spiritual practice — sacred, even — but you don’t want to get all up on your high horse about it?
Do you dream that your work could be of service in some way? To proliferate joy, connection, and insight?
Welcome.
You’re an Artmonk and you’ve found your people.
Your Path to Creative Awakening
Artist Unleashed Bundle
A bundle of resources designed to help you dissolve creative blocks, deepen your art practice, and connect with your inner muse. Yours for free!
30-Day Challenge
Join a global community of creative makers for the Art Monastery's most popular course. You'll find the support & tools to express yourself everyday, building a creative habit that lasts longterm!
Awakening Creativity Program
A transformative program that supports women & non-binary folx to overcome creative blocks, unleash flow, and make the art you were born to make.
Meet Suiko McCall: Artist, Teacher, Visionary
Suiko Betsy McCall is the heart behind the Art Monastery. As an artist, teacher, and former monk, Suiko merges creativity and spiritual practice to help others reconnect with their authentic voice.
Her approach blends the discipline of monastic life with the freedom of artistic exploration, empowering creatives to see their art as sacred and their lives as works of art.
Today is not going anywhere
Today is not hell, necessarily
Today is not the end of time or hope
Today is not wood, it does not float so much as manifest from air & water
Today is not dry, it’s glistening in dew
Today is not in love with me more than anyone else
Today is not a manual for contented consumption
Today is not the dream of a bear (though it is not not an ursine dream)
Today is not a time of forgetting
Today is not the cusp of anything revelatory, anymore than any day is
Today is not an idea fixed in someone’s subjectivity
Today is not a full moon in another solar system
Today is not devoid of color
Today is not obliged to mask itself for my comfort
Today is not the part when the prodigal child wanders off or returns
Today is not a preview of tomorrow
Today is not alone among nations or a light on a hill
Today is not meant for detention centers, targeted strikes or killing technology
Today is not a joke to amuse callous men
Today is not language backfilled into a sinkhole
Today is not hopeless
Today is not alone, flying through mystery for no good reason
Today is not without meaning
Today is not the matrix (neither pill pertains)
Today is not a mirage nor a mirror-image nor a meme
Today is not fooling anyone with its springtime nonchalance
Today is not harboring ill-will
Today is not terrified by the terror of love
Today is not impeded by dependent co-arising
Today is not without contradiction
Today is not going away anytime soon
Today is not closed-off from memory, nostalgia or antipathy
Today is not above (or below) imagination
Today is not embarrassed to look directly at flowers & trees & people
Today is not ashamed to weep, bow & experience gratitude
Today is not stopping until it’s time to drop all pretense
Today is not repeatable, no matter what.
Stay inspired with our Moonletters
Receive original poems and paintings around each New and Full Moon, designed to inspire your creative journey and deepen your connection to art, intuition, and rhythms of the earth.
Curious to explore past Moonletters? Browse the Archive and soak up the inspiration.
What Artmonks Are Saying
Our programs have transformed the lives of countless creatives. Hear directly from our Artmonks about their journey.
"The Artmonk Challenge did for me exactly what I had hoped it would -- helped me establish a daily art practice. I cannot tell you how grateful I am! I have a ridiculously hard time establishing routines of any sort, definitely my biggest challenge. But making a small goal (art 5-10 minutes every day), and having the accountability of that 100 Day Challenge, worked for me."
"Thank you for your work in creating this entrance into art. I am 74 and have never had any art instruction. Whatever the quality of my art may or may not be, I feel like I’m coming home."
"Very creative and deeply spiritual organization. The folks who run it are devoted to it and live their lives in accordance with it."
“I’ve been taking Suiko’s retreats and programs since 2016. Suiko’s natural grace, ease, and wisdom have always nurtured me. My desire to connect with art, meditation, and such like minded people is essential to my well being.”
"Suiko has the incredibly rare ability to translate the creative process into usable, understandable pieces of information. I don’t even know how that’s actually possible — but she does it."
"Suiko offers substantial value through the playfulness she brings to everything she does and says, as well as her love of art and creative thinking... She is non-traditional and that is EXTREMELY appealing because it gives me (and others) room to play and explore myself (thoughts, feelings, ideas, desires) freely without fear of scolding."