• My Welcome speech at the Open ATELIER Party, Friday, 21st October

My Welcome speech at the Open ATELIER Party, Friday, 21st October

A warm welcome!

I look forward to discussing art with you and showing you my work. 

Thank you for your interest!

Since launching my art career 100% in January this year - no more shop, no more B&B, no more teaching English - I been on an exciting roller coaster ride. I've studied the business side of running an art business with two fascinating women in online courses, built a new website with support from Michael my husband, and become increasingly convinced that I'm finally doing what I need to do.

I am aware of a very elitist art market. And I am aware that unfortunately there is very little art knowledge left. Anyone can pick up a paintbrush. I don't want to discourage anyone from doing this, but I do want to say why I feel I have to make the best work possible and what that means to me.

I have been studying art theory and philosophy for over 10 years now with my professor, the artist and philosopher, Martin Rabe, who unfortunately had to stay home with severe migraines.

I believe that artists must be more than aware of what is going on in the world today. An artist has to make a picture of the world with his senses and be open to lifelong learning. Because what we make is a mirror of the world as phenomenon.

And that is always overwhelming and uncanny: I recently sold my painting "The Creation of Time" to Washington DC. It's an abstract work in shades of blue, orange and black. Veronika, who bought it, worked on the NASA project taking photos of the birth of stars, among other things. The final image, which I'm sure everyone saw in the media, was related to my painting in colour, shapes and movement. How can that be? I painted it before I knew anything about the NASA telescope! (The physicist Pauli reported also that he dreamt beforehand what he found afterwards in his experiments, and discussed this phenomenon with Carl Gustav Jung).

The Creation of Time, 2022

 

NASA's Webb reveals cosmic cliffs, glittering landscapes of stellar birth

What am I trying to achieve when I paint?

I want to capture the beauty that surrounds us and which, according to recent neurological research, is vital for survival. 

I believe that a painting comes alive when you look at it. I want to capture the numinous in my art. To create a work that the viewer likes to "walk around in" and that gives you something indescribable. This is not easy, and requires a lifetime of practice, Rembrandt did it. At the end of my life, I want to be able to capture light the way he could.

I believe in spirit and I believe in beauty. In a constantly moving life force in which we humans are the center. If we don't perceive the world, who will? Hence my painting "WoMan is the Measure of all Things". I want to capture nature, which is more than the nature we see. The "natura naturans", as Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling called it. Nature that is always productively creating something new, in other words, vitality and spirit.

I believe that everyone needs art. Unfortunately, only very few people know this. It is also no longer taught. We need more than just everyday life. That's why I want to make it accessible to everyone, and that's why I also enjoy painting everyday situations, like "Tied to the kitchen sink", and lifting them above the mundane. To give it something beyond nature. It's not the what, it's always the how. I paint people who are not used to being painted: for example, the builders working on this never-ending project on our high street!

I hope you will consider entering into a relationship with a work of art, thus enabling a community of life. For the price of a dinner in a restaurant, you can acquire a unique, living world that you will enjoy for a long time to come! That lasts far longer than a saited tummy.

And only today, only here, and very uniquely, there's a 20% discount on all the works exhibited here to make your decision a little easier. Plus, you can win a painting! Just fill in your address! I will draw the lots later. 

I believe that art is made by people for people. That's why I focus on the handmade. That's why my prints are burnished by hand, without a press. My canvases are stretched, primed and nailed by me. To make it human, because "only the known can relate" and we don't have a machine in our body.

I believe that women have the same right to be artists as men. I believe that men and women and everyone in between are part of the same whole. That's why I made the series "Reclaiming the Feminine" and paintings like "Frau am Herd" (Woman at the Stove) currently on display at Chez Rodolfo. The woman is part of the whole and not to blame for being excluded from the Garden of Eden. Rather, we are all connected and have only this one wonderful world. The rational and the irrational are equal.

I said before that life is lifelong learning - we have to make a picture of the world and thereby "educate" ourselves. That's why I'm doing the Hagitude programme with Dr Sharon Blackie - to learn from other women's stories of how to achieve the wisdom of age. Yes, I am 51, but I still have a lot to do!

Finally, I have for you a quote from her book "Hagitude" which I think is very important for art, for the world, for all of us, and reflects what I learn about art philosophy in my seminars with Martin Rabe.

Here is Dr Sharon Blackie on the numinous and Carl Gustav Jung (so an Englishwoman and a Swiss united):

„We need to recognise “a divine life” within us, to believe that we have a place in the universe. In his writings, he repeatedly lamented the loss of the spiritual – what he called numinosity – in the modern world. Most people today are reluctant to apprentice themselves to mystery. Caught in the toils of egohood, he suggested, we’ve been taught to distrust anything we can’t see, touch or quantify, and we’re disorientated and dissociated because we’ve lost our ancient moral and spiritual traditions. And so Jung asks us – no matter how out of step with the over-culture we might find ourselves as a consequence – to foster our soul growth, arguing that, unless we do, we will never achieve our full potential.”

This will be presented in more detail in my next newsletter. It remains exciting.

I hope I have now given you "food for thought" as well as "a feast for the eyes" with this exhibition.

Thank you very much.