With art students and young artists I visited the CODA museum in Apeldoorn for a seminar by Karin Bos. First we had an artist talk and tour, later a workshop gouache painting. She curated the current exhibition Expidetion Nature. Her work is mostly oil on canvas and gouache on paper, there was also a life size aquarelle. Expedition Nature shows works of around 20 artists, displaying their relation and association to the theme. With a wide vararity of disciplines there are installations, video’s and sculptures to be seen.
We visited the exposition together with Bos who talked about her work and the exposition. Her inspiration comes from travels where she takes photographs of landscapes and her niece dressing up. These form her archive. Later in the studio the photographs are used in a free way to create a new landscape. Questions where asked (a lot) during the artist talk. From more practical questions such as ‘how big is your pallette?’ to more personal questions such as ‘what does the figurative elements mean to you in your painting? For example: could the children in the red dress be red dots?’. Bos was very open about her work process. She told that the figurative element in her painting, in this painting the children in red dresses, is what makes it vivid and exciting because you dont know whether it means something good or bad is about to happen.
After the artist talk the workshop gouache painting by The Fine Art Collective started. Bos brought photographs from her own acrhive but you could to paint what you wanted. Though you work with water, the result and proces is different than aquarelle. It is more matte, thicker and less transparant. You can more easily color a surface, simply by applying the gouache paint with less water. This is my experience first time working with gouache, wich I had been curious to try out. I would say that gouache is tougher than aquarelle. I painted 3 landscapes and a portrait. Check out the photo’s to get an impression of the workshop and day. To check out Bos works you can, of course, best visit CODA.