Board of Directors

Stewart Cubley, Founder and Director

For over four decades, Stewart Cubley has pioneered a way of integrative and creative living through the practice of process painting. His method is one of respectful questioning, inviting you to extend yourself into new areas of thought and feeling. Stewart has the ability to meet you where you are and to ask the right question at the right time. He is a down-to-earth teacher whose personal interactions allow you to see yourself differently in ways that can be life changing. Stewart travels throughout the world, teaching his unique approach to thousands of people at personal growth centers such as the Esalen Institute and the Omega Institute. He has brought his work to multinational corporations, programs in prisons and countless other public forums. Stewart is the co-author of Life, Paint & Passion, Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression (Tarcher/Putnam). He and his wife, Shae Irving, live in Fairfax, California and part of the year on their homestead near Denali Park, Alaska.

Barbara Kennedy, Board Member

Dr. Barbara (“BK”) Kennedy is a lifelong public school educator and avid process painter residing in Austin, TX. She brings to the Board experience in small business ownership, education partnerships, strategic planning, grant-writing, and non-profit institutional board work. In addition to painting, BK spends her free time in the great outdoors, walking and practicing meditation and yoga, as well as reading, writing, and exploring all things musical.

Robert Hardy, Treasurer

As a young pup I wanted to be an artist when I grew up, but alas I went to school for an architecture degree and then jumped into engineering and project management in the commercial construction field. Over my career, I have worked on many hi-rise building projects, especially in San Francisco. During the times I have been overwhelmed by the nature of working to shepherd the chaos of building projects, Painting Experience retreats have grounded my soul to express what was held deep. It’s been well over 20 years now since connecting with Stewart and the different sacred spaces we worked in together. I always look forward to discovering what may spill out in vibrant color. Though I am still in the same daytime career, I believe it was The Painting experience that influenced my adventure into meditation and becoming an ordained Interfaith Minister. I look forward to participating and contributing to the Painting Experience as an essential gateway to those in search of their own healing and unique spiritual journey.

Matt Belay, Senior Facilitator

Raised on a farm in southwestern Virginia, Matt developed many skills and practical understandings at an early age. During and after university at Virgina Tech, he traveled extensively throughout the world for both work and personal study, widening his perspective of art, culture and diversity. While pursuing his degree in landscape architecture at Virginia Tech, he supported and organized many art programs and creative workshops in his community and beyond. These workshops included many of the Mountain Lake Workshops in which groups collaborated with artist such as M.C. Richards and Merce Cunningham. For a number of years, Matt worked as operations manager for Hui Ho’olana retreat center in Molokai, Hawaii, which is where he first connected with The Painting Experience. Matt now lives in his hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia, where he does all manner of construction projects on his own rural property and in the surrounding community. His primary interest is in continuing to live in a community setting and supporting his own and others’ personal growth by facilitating The Painting Experience locally and throughout the world.

Barbara Kennedy, Board Member

Dr. Barbara (“BK”) Kennedy is a lifelong public school educator and avid process painter residing in Austin, TX. She brings to the Board experience in small business ownership, education partnerships, strategic planning, grant-writing, and non-profit institutional boardwork. In addition to painting, BK spends her free time in the great outdoors, walking and practicing meditation and yoga, as well as reading, writing, and exploring all things musical.

Karine Baczynski, Board Member

In 1991, Karine discovered the Painting Experience Studio. She was pursuing a BA in fine arts at SFSU at the time, and has been process painting ever since. After college and a lot of painting, Karine studied documentary film production at Stanford University, worked in Silicon Valley to develop an early video streaming platform, and then moved to NYC to work in film and television.

Through the years, she has always maintained close connection with her painting process, working with Barbara Kaufman and the CCE Studio of San Francisco. In 2014, having dropped out of the film world to have a baby, she reconnected with Stewart Cubley, one of the founders of the Painting Experience Studio. Stewart’s evolution and refinement of his facilitation method since they met in 1991, inspired Karine to discover even more freedom and depth in her process.

Karine brings a knowledge of other process oriented modalities to her teaching, having trained and been certified in the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Awareness, and having recently been certified in Digital Storytelling through the Story Center.