I’ve never been to an artist’s colony myself, but I have a friend who seems to go from colony to colony. She’s away several months out of the year doing this. She says it is wonderful. Of course, she doesn’t have to pay for it, since she get grants or scholarships or whatever to pay for it.
She says that it is wonderful to have the peace to just focus on work. Her work is composing. It’s also nice to have evenings to share work with others, and to get some feedback about it. The mixture of arts seems to be inspiring to her. The community is also fun. She made it sound like something I wish I could do. Maybe when the kids have fled the nest.
Since these things are temporary, it doesn’t seem like there’s much risk of it getting so incestuous that people are totally focussed on something other than work. It’s not like a commune. It really is a colony, I think. For the most part, anyway. I think that if you ever get a chance to stay in one for a week or a month or a summer or whatever, it would be a wonderful thing to do.