I continued my exploration of inks and made some new drawings. This time I experimented with inks based on alcohol, oil and water, partly using raw pigments, but also spices and various powders.
It is very fascinating to see how the actually incompatible inks react with each other and how completely unforeseen shapes emerge.
When I painted, I didn't have any special motifs in mind, the pictures just "happened".
Everyone can see in them what they like.
abstract art
At this time of year, Fitou is a little sleepy. On the one hand, that's nice, but on the other hand, a little action couldn't hurt.
And so we decided to organise a Christmas market in our art gallery.
I asked some artist friends if they would be interested in taking part. They were :-)
We had beautiful ceramics, jewellery creations, Isabell painted beautiful Christmas cards and I tried out some new painting techniques for this occasion.
When traveling in China in 2019 I had the opportunity to get a very short introduction into Chinese calligraphy and traditionell Chinese painting at the Tang Bo Art Museum Xian. It was a rainy afternoon and the hotel receptionist recommended this museum as a must see to better understand Chinese art. We were the only visitors and the museum guide was happy to welcome two interested visitors. Our very detailed private tour ended in something like a classroom where we learned about ancient, traditionell and modern Chinese writing.
Last weeks I worked with very raw materials: petrified earth, field stones, stones that have crumbled into earth, gravel and lots of beton. We built a floor in a part of an old cave, about 28 square meters. We chopped out a lot of earth and stones (because over the years, some of what was stored on the ground dissolved into some kind of soil), transported most of it into our garden as a foundation for a new vegetable bed, levelled the ground with gravel and concreted the ground.
I have to submit I like working with concrete, as I do with sand and lime and since a few weeks, bitumen.
Until a few years ago, I could not imagine that I can create art.
It changed when I did a one week trainingscourse in 2009, to learn using traditional techniques to restore and decorate walls.
My trainer was an artist-artisan, he not only miraculously mixed colours and materials, and explained how the different materials react with each other, he also conjured beautiful examples of multi-coloured stucco, lime plaster and Tadelakt.
I was thrilled, but still far away from thinking that this might have something to do with art.
As an artist, I prefer that everyone buy the art they love, and thus they will find a place for it in their home. Selecting and placing art is an art in itself.
It might be difficult to find the right place in your home, fitting to your style. In such a case it could be helpful to hang it in different places, maybe re-arrange some furniture, re-paint a wall, improve lightning, all these changes will be worth to enjoy the art you love.
I’m a little torn on this issue.
On one hand, I want my pictures give a title, and by him telling, what I deliberated about while painting. On the other hand I give a direction and thus influence the viewer. I don’t want to define the direction or interpretation, each viewer should develop its own thoughts and reflections. However, a title can also be stimulating, it may well be so, that the viewer would never get the idea behind the painting and it could be quite enriching to be drawn to this path.
The paintings I create arise in my mind and I do not always exactly how it turns out on the canvas.
It just happens. Of course, I have an idea, a thought, a memory, but how I then express it with colours is a more or less unconscious process. The picture becomes it’s meaning during the process of painting.
It is my meaning, because it is how I see the world from my subjective point of view.
This is my first abstract painting.