Supporting Acts workshop series: Sticks & Stones – Josje Hattink

While we draw, Josje Hattink shares reflections on experiencing artisthood: focussing not only on periods when everything flows and exhibitions, commissions, and publications unfold with ease, but deliberately zooming in on the quieter intervals: times when gaps appear in a CV. When productivity slows due to care, health, finances, parenthood, burnout, or simply life itself. How do you begin again? And what does “beginning” really mean?

Watercolour allows for immediacy: a single stain is a start. No fixed plan is required; the material itself invites movement. At the same time, it asks for surrender. The pigment settles into shapes you could not have foreseen.

We celebrate successful artists with thriving careers yet rarely honour the hidden or unforeseen phases that shape a practice. Is such a period empty, or is something quietly ripening beneath the surface?

About the artist
Josje Hattink studied Fine Art at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) (BA) and the Piet Zwart Institute (MFA). In her work, she explores contested notions of “natural” environments and the ways in which those are constructed, mediated, and controlled by human intervention. She is part of the artist initiative Daisy Chain and has presented her work at various venues across the Netherlands. She is currently inhabiting a gap in her CV, exploring it as a transformative period that quietly demonstrates how life events (such as parenthood) contribute to an art practice in unexpected ways.

Teken Or Leave it provides workshops and open draws, every other Wednesday. This workshops is part of the exhibition Supporting Act(s) and Josje Hattink was invited by the artists of the exhibition, Jeannette Slütter and Harriet Rose Morley.

Practical info
-Date: 25.03 – 19:00
-Adress: Energieplein 69, Haarlem
-Workshop cost: 10 euros
-Tickets via Eventbrite (link in bio)*
*can’t pay? We work with a sliding scale system and provide donation based and free tickets