14 Dec 2017  |   04:11am IST

WHEN ART MEETS WINE

Matchstick Movement heralded the start of the Christmas season with their third event – Wine painting. Strange as it may sound, they painted using only red wine as a medium. Café checks out this unique workshop

 

 

The mention of ‘art’ and ‘wine’ in the same

sentence usually conjures up a wine and cheese art gallery event. But that’s not what we are talking about. Instead, picture a beautiful heritage home in the scenic Fontainhas in Panjim. There’s a Christmas themed Italian snack bar, sangria, foot-tapping music and an overall warm, light-hearted ambience. In the middle of all this, a workshop is underway. It’s not the usual kind of art workshops; this one is different. What’s unique about it is the medium used to paint: Wine!

“People usually think of traditional media like watercolour, oil, acrylic, etc when it comes to creative expressions in art. We wanted to demonstrate that one’s creativity should never be curtailed by the medium. And this is one great way of doing that, quips Danica Da Silva Pereira.

An illustrator, Danica, along with Ezer Mascarenhas, a creative and design consultant, head Matchstick Movement that aims to bring creative experiences in a social setting to regular people who want to express themselves.

While these two are called ‘Firestarters’, they have a lot of support from their families and friends who help in, as they say, “keeping the fire burning in these experiences meant to help people discover themselves”. For instance, they had earlier organised an ‘Evening with Watercolours’, where guests expressed what was on their minds through concept art, and ‘This is Me!’, a self-portrait experience in acrylics where the participants drew their personas rather than their real portraits.

“Thus, the wine painting workshop seemed perfect for our creative social experience campaign, where we kindle the creative in our guests in a fun, non-judgemental and inspiring atmosphere,” says Ezer.

The event was open to guests of all ages, amateurs, beginners and non-painters with absolutely no previous experience in drawing or painting.

When they started marketing this event, a lot of people responded, not to confirm their attendance, but to clarify if they understood the title right. Most thought it was a painting event with wine served as refreshment. They were excited, but had tons of questions challenging if one could really paint with wine.

“We think it was curiosity that prompted them to attend. The painting skill levels of our guests differed. We had some who never painted before, and some who had basic to intermediate knowledge in other mediums,” adds Danica.

“But, since our format is very different from that of a traditional workshop, we had our lead artist Manuela Mendonça Gomes brief everyone on techniques and treatment,” adds Ezer.

They added that painting with wine is very similar but not comparable to watercolour; it’s similar in technique and usage, but the medium looks different and reacts differently too.

Manuela, a BFA graduate from Goa College of Art with experience in different media including canvas, murals, origami etc, led the event by demonstrating the basics of drawing those objects for beginners, and went on to illustrate how to paint using wine. She explained how to draw simple still life forms, composition, basic strokes, techniques and developing a unique creative expression building shades and tones with wine.

The guests painted on an acid free cold-pressed heavy watercolour paper. “We gave our guests basic objects of a wine bottle and a glass for inspiration, and the topic was to use those objects as art forms to create a Christmas themed painting. So, they were not expected to do anything realistic, but given the creative liberty to express their imagination in whichever way they felt deemed fit,” says Manuela.

“Since wine has a monotone colour, one builds the complexity of their art through tones, from light tone to dark, increasing the intensity step by step, layer over layer,” she adds.

Ezer further explains that even though there was a lot of technicality in the process, their guests really took up the challenge and enjoyed the experience. He adds that the outcome of the evening surprised all of them as the guests completed really beautiful and unique Christmas-themed paintings, done using only wine.

“The art pieces were really gorgeous, unique and spellbinding. We didn’t expect such an outcome from people who were using wine as a medium for the first time. It goes to show that creativity cannot be dictated by the medium,” says Danica.