The
Sweden
Scholarship
14.5. - 25.5.2026
Pentiment is awarding 16 workshop scholarships to students and young artists primarily based in, Sweden and Germany. The scholarship includes a workshop in Sweden in May.
We would like to support you in gathering exciting and intensive inspiration, impressions and experiences in the Swedish countryside, far away from urban areas.
In order to create a positive working atmosphere in this remote location, it is important that everyone is willing and eager to engage in a group dynamic process and contribute to the success of the workshop
The Workshop
NATURE AND HUMAN
This year, the workshop will be led by Hamburg-based painter Gosia Machon. Her figurative abstract paintings and drawings are created through intuitive processes and draw on an inner archive. Her work is fueled by unconscious, autobiographical, and collective experiences and memories. Time and again, she revolves around the longing for untouched nature.
The painting course departs from a purely naturalistic understanding of nature representation, which focuses exclusively on visible surfaces. Instead, it focuses on a form of painting and drawing that understands nature as a multi-layered space of experience. The starting point is the idea that nature is not only observed, but also perceived as a living environment. The subjective perception of the participants plays a central role in this: personal moods, biographical influences, and one's own inner attitude toward nature influence the artistic interpretation of a motif.
We will also perceive the invisible or subtle aspects of nature and incorporate them artistically—such as airspace, light energy, sounds, smells, movements, or the hidden life in the soil. Nature is understood not as an object, but as a dynamic structure of interacting living beings.
The course focuses on the idea that we as humans are an inseparable part of this ecological network. Artistic practice should help to question the supposed boundaries between human individuals and non-human living beings. This connection can give rise to a visual language that links both one's own inner world of feelings and the immediate experience of the natural environment.
My methodical exercises are personality-oriented and support the process of subjective image finding in a non-judgemental and playful atmosphere.
Every result can be interesting and can be seen as a phenomenon of a creative experiment that has something to tell us - about ourselves and about the environment and society in which we move.
Course material
Paper in many different sizes and weights—all types of pencils, charcoal, chalk, water-based paints (ink/acrylic/watercolor/gouache), and various brushes, sponges/cloths
Course language
English, German
Gosia Machon
Born in Upper Silesia, Poland, in 1979, she studied at HAW Hamburg (Department of Design) and has been working as a freelance artist in Hamburg ever since. Her figurative-abstract paintings are created through intuitive processes and deal with observations and memories of the nature that surrounds and inhabits us.
She has received several awards, including the “Hamburg Working Scholarship for Visual Artists” in 2023 and first prize in the “Nord-West Kunst” competition in 2014. Gosia exhibits her work and projects internationally, including in galleries and art institutions in Berlin, Paris, Antwerp, Warsaw, Istanbul, Vienna, Toronto, Tel Aviv, Kyoto, and elsewhere.
Since 2013, she has been working as a lecturer in drawing and painting at several German art academies and, since 2021, has been collaborating with the Pentiment Summer Academy on workshops in Hamburg.
The Scholarship
Benefit
participants will enjoy the following benefits free of charge:
- participation in the workshop
- travel expenses (for artists from Scandinavia from home. For all other artists from Hamburg!)
- delicious meals
- accommodation in shared rooms in the old school building
Requirements
- the workshop is mend to be an opportunity for emerging artists: you should be a student or your degree in an artistic training programme should be no longer than 3 years back in time
- solidarity: we expect you to be willing to take on small tasks in between to support the Pentiment team during the realisation, such as supporting the kitchen staff
- you are ok with providing a small artistic work that is created in Sweden to stay on site, as a gift to our hosts.
- Applicants who have not yet participated in the Pentiment Sweden Scholarship will be given priority.
Registration form
- name, address, date of birth, telephone number- Information on artistic career
- 5 work samples (PDF)
- letter of motivation, half a DinA4 page (PDF)