We Love Art: Best Art and Painting Event 2023
We Love Art has grown from one woman teaching her friends painting, to creating the paint event scene in the Middle East. Now, it is the biggest regional art community and international art brand, recently recognised in the UAE Business Awards 2023. We speak to the firm’s founder, Denise Schmitz to find out more.
Starting as a passion project in 2013, We Love Art was created to plug a social creativity market gap. Now, 10 years later, the organisation has had 100,000 people join the community by experiencing painting and creativity at events or from the comfort of their own home. The events are for everyone, and include social Paint & Grape evenings, inspiring eight-week courses, corporate creative teambuilding events, and also a handcrafted premium Artbox with bespoke video to paint from anywhere in the world. We Love Art recently realised an innovative online marketplace with Art handpicked by We Love Art from some of the worlds most emerging artists, enabled by the blockchain. “Throughout all experiences, we focus on making art accessible for everyone and ensure that people leave agreeing with our ethos that “a creative life is an amplified life”,” explains Denise Schmitz. “Our clients range from people with zero painting experience wanting a painting night, to experienced creatives. Even kids can join in with our sister brand, kidzloveart.com. When We Love Art was born, it felt like a lone pioneer. Denise can vividly remember setting up a stall at Alserkal Avenue and slowing registering people to her mailing list. Since then, Dubai has transformed into regional & global creative hub, and We Love Art is proud to have formed a key part of that journey.
“Dubai is one of the most dynamic cities in the world,” she elaborates. “We feel that it attracts people who are always eager to try new creative experiences, a lot of patrons being local Emiratis, which makes us very happy.
Be it a five-star hotel, iconic museums, chic restaurant, or a garden exhibition, Denise cannot remember having an event with less than 20 nationalities. “And that is the big opportunity of Dubai, its diversity and outstanding vision of its leaders. We regularly have people fly in from Saudi or Europe for our events or painting course over an 8 week stay. At the end of each course, we have an exhibition in front of friends and family and I always ask artists to say a few words. The sheer and personal emotion that pours out at having created a new painting always inspires me.