Discover a more intimate connection with artworks, architecture and nature - through a range of guided mindfulness and contemplative practices.

Deep Looking: art, architecture & nature.

The Art of Deep Looking provides you with the frameworks and tools to help build focus and attention, while expanding your innate curiosity. It also amplifies your ability to tap into the awe and wonder that a deep connection with art, nature or significant architectural works can stimulate within.

The Art of Deep Looking can help you create a deeper connection to joy, delight, tenderness and beauty!

“I have a new love for art.”

“It opened a way to experience architecture like never before.”

“I was looking at the paintings as though with new eyes.”

“I will never see art in the same way again.”

“I wish I could go back to all the art galleries I have visited around the world, to have this deep looking experience with all my favourite works.”

The Art of Deep Looking (AoDL) has offered live and virtual sessions for nearly a decade. Some of the major cultural institutions we’ve worked with are: Sydney Opera House; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Brisbane Arts Festival; VIVID Ideas Festival, Sydney; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney; UTS, Sydney & The School of Life, Sydney.

Working with a diverse and beautiful range of artworks by leading artists from around the world including: Kandinsky, Vermeer, Artemisia; Morisot; Caravaggio; Beckett; Streeton; Olsen; Hokusai; van Gogh; Modigliani; Manet; Hilma af Klint; Kahlo; Mondrian; Malevich; Popova; Klimt; Carr & Cézanne.

The ILLUME App will guide you gently through mindful moments with works of art from a wide range of cultural institutions including:

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; MoMA, NYC; Tate Modern, London; Villa Borghese, Rome; Uffizi, Florence; Hokusai Museum, Tokyo; Art Institute of Chicago; The Metropolitan Museum, NYC; & the Vatican in Rome.

The ILLUME App

How to Look More Deeply

In a world that always pushes the accelerator, these mindful journeys will explore methods and practices that can give us greater power to pause and be open to ways of seeing things with greater awe and wonder.

Deep Looking White Paper

AoDL has positioned itself as one of the leading researchers within this extraordinary field of discovery. Working collaboratively with colleagues around the world to test and experiment with some of the most unique and innovative ways to explore how we can create a deeper connection with art! By watching sessions carefully and receiving insights from hundreds of participants - we’ve learned so much.

“Speed hides all subtlety, and reality is subtle.”

Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry, Arthur Zajonc

  • VIVID IDEAS 2023, Botanic Garden Sydney

    I so enjoyed the walk around the garden taking everything in at a slower pace, where I usually would just race around.

  • ILLUME App, National Gallery of Australia, 2023

    I experienced the art in a completely different way. I noticed patterns, textures and found a completely new appreciation for my own view of it. I loved that I was given permission to interpret it in my own way.

  • VIVID IDEAS 2023 - Botanic Gardens Sydney

    I felt so childlike again, full of wonder, joy, curiosity and delight. Thank you.

  • VIVID IDEAS 2023 - Frank Gehry designed building at UTS

    The session provided me with a greater level of feeling for the architecture. Knowing about something and seeing or visiting, does not equal experiencing it.

  • Art in Mind 2018, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

    We all know Vermeer's painting of the girl reading a letter. But mindfulness helped me see it clearly for the first time; and now it will be with me for life.

  • Sydney Opera House, Art of Deep Looking 2019

    It was an enlightening session of unwinding and shifting our focus off the normal day-to-day routine. It helped introduce a sense of deep connection to the building and the immediate environment. It was a simple, yet creative way to engage with this “beloved” space.