College News

QE students create lockdown art with the Bowes Museum

First year Fine Art students from QE have engaged in an exciting collaboration with The Bowes Museum. Led by Project Co-ordinator, Jess White, the students participated in two online workshops in which they produced their own artistic responses to Dieric Bouts the Elder’s painting ‘St Luke Drawing the Virgin and Child’ which returned to the Museum last autumn. Firstly, the group had three minutes to produce a drawing followed by twelve minutes to create a collage with materials from around their homes based on elements of interest to them in the painting. Artwork by Bouts, an influential Dutch artist from the fifteenth century, is incredibly rare in the United Kingdom and the students’ pieces will be transformed into a collaborative exhibition by artist, Melanie Kyles, to be displayed at The Bowes Museum, on their website and across their social media platforms.

Bethany Cansfield, who studies Fine Art, Graphics and History at QE, comments: ‘The sessions were very informative and a fun way to work. They tested our abilities to work under timed conditions and to be resourceful by using what we had at home to create art’. India Atkinson, who studies Fine Art, Biology and Geography, adds: ‘It was really interesting to see how we could make older pieces of artwork more modern’.

Dr. Carol Sommer, teacher of Fine Art at QE, concludes: ‘The workshops gave our students the opportunity to consider the history of art through contemporary lenses, in addition to the themes that the painting lends itself to and the aspects of modern day life to which it links. We’d like to thank Jess and The Bowes Museum for hosting the sessions, we thoroughly enjoyed taking part and look forward to seeing Melanie’s curation of our students’ work’.