Normally artists’ studios are located on industrial terrains or in abandoned office buildings on the far edge of a town. The studio of Annemiek Vos, however, is located right within the canals surrounding the historic city centre of Groningen. In a large historic building she is working hard on her new paintings. Amidst paintings, brushes and other materials we spoke to her about her work.
My whole life I had wanted to be a painter. It was a dream come true when I went straight from the havo to the Academy Minerva to start my education in Fine Art. I studied in a time when the Northern Realists were becoming famous and Academy Minerva was known to be one of the last places where you could truly learn the craft of painting. At the time the education took five years and I was taught by some famous painters such as Matthijs Röling and Diederik Kraaijpoel.
After my graduation I started in a studio located at the Violenstraat, which was a former building belonging to Academy Minerva. It had to be completely renovated and we got to rent it for the symbolic sum of one gulden per year. In 1989 I got the chance to move to this building in the Oude Boteringestraat. At first I had a small studio on the second floor. It had an amazing view across the city but it was very hard to move all my materials up there all the time. Not long after this studio on the ground floor became available and I haven’t moved ever since.
I usually define my work as ‘contemporary impressionism’. They are usually cityscapes of the city of Groningen and the lands surrounding it. Every now and then I also paint animals or portraits. Painting cityscapes can be very challenging for me as a painter as there can be many distracting elements in a street view that you would rather leave out of the painting, like a garbage truck or traffic signs, simply because they are not very aesthetic, but those are precisely the contemporary elements that you should to keep. It’s a challenge for me to find a way that these elements start to become part of the whole without distracting from the larger picture.
“It’s beautiful when people learn to see their surroundings in the way that I like to see them.” Annemiek Vos
Because of the way I paint, many people assume that I paint my paintings outdoors, but actually I paint exclusively at my studio. I used to paint en plein air before but I stopped doing that. It is much more comfortable to paint at my studio with some music in the background than it is to work outdoors with people hovering around me trying to peep over my shoulder. I base my paintings on photographs I have made, rather than painting after perception. Currently I am using drone photographs that I have made with my own drone from my backyard.
It is important to me that my paintings have a certain atmosphere and suggest things, instead of me trying to painstakingly copy a photograph. Just like the impressionists I work with tiny dots and blobs of paint. I also don’t use overhead projectors to trace photographs. I simply put the photograph on my tablet, place it next to my easel and paint like that. If you start to trace photographs, the painting will become like a big colouring book. You will lose your signature ‘handwriting’ if you start doing that. It is precisely the translation from blobs of paint to a picture that fascinates me and for me that is also the thing that makes painting magical. One of the best compliments I have ever had was when someone told me that they sometimes see cityscapes and it reminds them of my paintings. It’s beautiful when people learn to see their surroundings in the way that I like to see them.”
For more information about Annemiek Vos, visit her website. In addition, you can also find her work in our Art Rental Collection.