The Escape Artist (藝甸園) gives customers the chance to get in touch with their inner Cezanne without having to worry about the cleanup.
Co-founded by jewelry designer Brendon Chen (陳建衡) and Lesley Hu (胡世恩), the painting studio opened eight months ago in a lane near the intersection of Xinyi and Anhe Roads.
Unlike art schools, the Escape Artist has no teachers. Instead, it gives customers a pre-primed, mounted canvas and four hours to play with 20 colors of acrylic paint. Most people who come to the Escape Artist have no prior art experience, Chen says. The goal of the store is to create an easygoing environment where people can shake off pre-conceived notions about painting and bend the rules.
Photo Courtesy of The Escape Artist
“When I was in elementary school, I painted a purple sun. The teacher stopped me and said, ‘No, no, no, the sun is not purple, it’s yellow, red or orange,’” Chen says. “I was like, ‘No, I want to paint a purple sun, I dreamed of a purple sun!’”
“People are used to being told what to do and it’s scary to look at an empty canvas,” he adds. “But when they start to paint, it feels great. There isn’t a right or wrong way, or someone judging you.”
Though similar studios offering “paintertainment” or “art jamming,” as painting on canvas for fun is sometimes called, have proliferated around the world, The Escape Artist is the first store dedicated to the concept to open in Taiwan.
Photo Courtesy of The Escape Artist
With high ceilings, large windows and decorative accents made from driftwood, The Escape Artist combines an art studio environment with an upscale spin. A sunny cafe in the back serves tea, coffee and freshly baked bread and cakes. Red wine, white wine, whiskey and vodka are available for people who want some libations to help unleash their creative spirit.
The Escape Artist also frequently hosts team-bonding activities, giving businesses ranging from management consulting firms to industrial design companies an alternative to trust falls for building morale.
“We want to encourage people to think outside the box and the social roles they assume on a daily basis,” Hu says.
Photo: Catherine Shu, Taipei Times
“That’s the reason why companies do team bonding here,” Chen adds. “No matter if you are a lawyer or a doctor or a financial consultant, you need creativity to solve different problems.”
Employees from one firm painted for an hour and then held an afternoon meeting over tea and snacks. Then they went back to painting, this time on each other’s creations.
“They painted on someone else’s canvas for five minutes. After that, they could decide to keep what their co-worker had done, create around it or cover it,” Chen says. “That creates a different kind of communication, not by words but by colors.”
The studio stocks spatulas, sponges and palette knives, but Chen says the Escape Artist’s customers often take a more creative approach to creating textures. They squirt paint out from plastic bags, blow it from drinking straws or just use their hands, reliving the messy joys of finger-painting.
“I’m sure there are a lot of people who are wondering, besides KTV and nightclubs, what else is really fun that they can do without getting drunk,” Chen says. “We don’t just target people who are ‘artsy.’”
THE ESCAPE ARTIST: A MINI REVIEW
I paid a visit to The Escape Artist last week to see how relaxing and fun “paintertainment” actually is. The studio is located on a lane a block away from Xinyi Rd, but there are relatively few pedestrians, so I felt comfortable at my easel in front of several large picture windows. Even though I picked the smallest size, it was still intimidating to be faced with a blank canvas. The Escape Artist’s friendly staffers helped me relax, however, showing me around the supplies shelf and giving me a few examples of what other customers had done.
Soon I was happily mixing paint on cardboard palettes (which are recycled afterward) and applying it in broad strokes. The paint is acrylic and dries quickly, but it is easy to work with. (You can dilute it with water for a glaze effect or build it up to create texture.) After my four hours were up, my canvas was packaged in a “wet paint box” to protect it. I appreciated The Escape Artist’s unobtrusive employees, who dropped by my easel occasionally with compliments and to ask if they could take photos for their Facebook page, but otherwise stayed out of my way and allowed me to experiment freely with the paint.
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