The event was hosted by Jaurné van der Westhuizen, a professional artist who specialises in live wedding speed painting. She attends the happiest day of people’s lives, and makes artwork of them and their guests, being able to finish a piece in just a couple of minutes.
Before moving to the Algarve, she never expected to be painting as a career. “I taught special needs as an intermediate and senior phase teacher for many years”, but her lack of fluency in Portuguese meant she found it difficult to continue that line of work here.
“I’ve always liked painting by myself. A friend and I were together one night, I was painting with her, and she was painting with me”, Jaurné recounted how she got into in the world of the arts. Her friend told her that the painting was beautiful, encouraging her to pursue this further, so she posted it to Instagram and started getting traction. “One thing led to another, it just happened, and I felt inspired.”
“Now, I’m painting all the time – for fun, for work – I event dream of painting, it’s wild.”
Paintbrush to paper
Coming into the studio, I was greeted warmly. We were a group of six people, strangers brought together for the sake of art. Jaurné sat us down and had us playing two truths and a lie to break the ice, getting to know each other a little.
Once we were acquainted, we were presented with six pieces of paper, which formed a drawing of a women’s face. The task given was to start painting in watercolour whichever way we wished, the after a few minutes, the papers were swapped around, and each person built upon the work of the previous painter. Repeating that until everyone had a turn on each piece, the final product was a beautiful woman, painted in many unique combinations of colour.
The next activity in the workshop was to create our own flowers, applying techniques that Jaurné showed us. She even taught us how to make a bee, adding a bit of buzz to our artwork.
Finally, we were given the freedom to paint our own work from scratch, using all the techniques we had learned over the course of the workshop to express or own inner creativity, putting paintbrush to paper to create something truly reflective of ourselves.
All in all, the workshop lasted for a very pleasant three hours, and the studio provided us with all the material necessary to complete our artwork.
TEIAS – Arte Local is the home for a whole range of artists with a wide array of specialties, including acrylics, ceramics, jewellery, and even handcrafted wooden puzzles.
They host a new exhibition every month, along with a series of workshops that can be signed up for on their website https://teiaslagos.pt/. Jaurné also has her own Instagram page where he posts her work, called “veil.andvow”.