Painting, chalking and drawing. It was all possible yesterday at the Drents Museum in Assen. The Vincent Minds program focuses on the influence of art on mental health. Through workshops, visitors could pick up a brush themselves and completely relax.
The campaign is connected to the artist Vincent van Gogh who came to Drenthe 140 years ago. The museum has an exhibition about that. “He struggled with his mental health all his life. But painting in the Drenthe and nature gave him a certain peace,” spokesperson Floor Oostra explains. “We want to show through workshops, lectures and the exhibition itself that art can have a positive effect on your mental well-being.”
One of the workshops is ‘experimenting and smearing’, a handful of visitors gathered in the Statenzaal to create a work of art. “They take a piece of cardboard and paint latex on it. Then they draw stripes with ecoline and chalk. Then they blur it again with latex, and then smear a thick black line over it. It sounds very confusing, but once you get going it is it makes sense,” laughs visual artist Mirjam Peters
Visitor John Niele is busy with his work of art, he looks at it again. “I actually have no idea what I made. I completely opened myself up to the workshop, something just came up on the cardboard and I continued with it.”