About the Studio Sunday Activity
Inspired by Wanda Koop’s large-scale paintings, imagine that you are huge as you draw and paint! Start with a tiny sketch, then create a large-scale artwork using big art materials.
This workshop is led by one of our amazing Gallery Educators.
About Studio Sundays
It’s an art party! Weekly Studio Sundays at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, presented by Canada Life, is an opportunity for individuals and families to drop in and create artwork.
Learn about the artists and artworks in MacKenzie’s Permanent Collection and featured exhibitions with weekly in-person hands-on workshops that can be modified for all ages. Visit our studio to make art with Gallery Educators and guest artists, exploring new and beloved techniques and art materials.
There is no cost to attend these drop-in sessions. All materials are provided.
The Artwork that Inspired Us
Many of Wanda Koops’s paintings start as small sketches and collections of notes. She puts these memories together to paint the impression, or feeling, of a place and time. Her artworks are often very abstract and aren’t meant to look like a realistic picture of one spot. They are supposed to feel like a memory of a place: fuzzy, glowing, and slipping through your fingers.
The colours of Wanda’s paintings aren’t always realistic. Instead, she tries to show us how she remembers the colours in her mind. She plays with bright colours against softer ones, like the neon red line breaking up this soft landscape. Why is it there? What is between you and this scene, stopping you from stepping right into it?
Many of Wanda’s landscape and cityscape paintings are huge! Here’s a story from Curator Timothy Long about how Wanda paints these large-scale artworks:
Macrosomatognosia. That’s the term used to describe the hallucination of having an abnormally large body, like the tea party scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice grows and grows. Wanda told me that she enters this state whenever she paints one of her large canvases, imagining her hand as large in relationship to her canvas as it is to her sketchbook. It explains her ability to translate the spontaneity of a small sketch to an immense canvas. And it implies that we are giants when we’re looking at her paintings.
About the Artist
Wanda Koop was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1951. Her parents were immigrants from the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine. Her family moved to Winnipeg when she was a child.
Wanda Koop knew she wanted to be an artist when she was quite young. She even took art lessons at the Winnipeg Art Gallery as a child! Do you think young Wanda knew she would have a painting on display in that art gallery by the time she was 19?
Wanda studied art at the University of Manitoba. She is a very accomplished artist, and her artworks have been shown and collected across Canada and around the world. She’s received many awards, including the Governor General’s Award, and has been given many honorary degrees.
Wanda Koop loves to travel, but she still calls Winnipeg home today. She cares a lot for her community. Many of her artworks are connected to local social issues, such as Indigenous land rights and climate change. In 1998, she started a free community art centre called Art City that gives young people a chance to learn from local artists.
Wanda Koop, Sightline (Shoreline with Red Line), 2001. Acrylic on Canvas, 124.5 x 246.4 cm. MacKenzie Art Gallery Permanent Collection
Studio Activity
Inspired by Wanda Koop’s large-scale paintings, imagine that you are huge as you draw and paint! Start with a tiny sketch, then create a large-scale artwork using big art materials.
Materials
- Small papers (about the size of a sticky note)
- Pencils, erasers, and sharpeners
- Large pieces of paper cut from rolls
- Tablecloths or other drop sheets
- Extra large paintbrushes and sponges
- Tempera paints
- Water cups
- Bingo dabbers or extra wide markers
Instructions
Step 1
Draw a sketch of a landscape or cityscape on a tiny paper. It should be somewhere you remember well. If you have photos of this place, feel free to use them as a reference. Or try to draw the scene entirely from your memory, focusing on drawing the parts that stood out to you.
Step 2
Now, you are going to make a gigantic artwork inspired by your tiny sketch! Place a tablecloth or drop sheet on the ground. Then, lay down an extra-large piece of paper for your artwork. Wanda Koop often works with her canvas on the ground, too, moving all around it.
Step 3
Imagine that you are a giant and that your hands are huge as you move around your paper. While drawing or painting with your large art supplies, think about the following:
- What were the big ideas in my tiny sketch?
- How can those big ideas be shown even bigger on my large paper?
- Can I make those big ideas from my tiny sketch more abstract?
- What kind of movements would a giant use when painting?
- Can I imagine stepping right into my artwork?
Things to Think About
- Wanda Koop cares a lot about the viewer, or the person looking at her art. She even considers herself a viewer of her own art! Why does the person looking at an artwork matter?
- Can you imagine how other people might see the same thing differently than you?
- What places have you been that left an impression on you?