Under the motto Timeless Impact, 9 artists from Hamburg and the surrounding area will be presenting two of their works each in the GRACE DENKER GALLERY from September 6th, 2019, thus providing an insight into their creative work and making people curious to find out more. The different approaches, ideas and concepts create a special, inspiring experience.
In the following article, get to know the exhibitors better and gain an insight into their artistic work and artistic concepts. The exhibitors answer questions about their artistic process, how they start and what materials they use. They also explain what influence their art can have on the world.
Alena Kuschnereit, Birte Marie Güler, Claudia Boy, Maria Carolina Villasmil de Martens, Manuel Di Chiara, Roswitha Sucker, Sebastian Merk, Sinikka Harms and Stefanie Woschek speak in the interview.
Register for the vernissage at: https://www.artcraftliving.com
Alena Kuschnereit
For me, art means freedom. A journey without end where you can enjoy existence. What ends up on my canvas are my detached thoughts, comparable to writing a novel without using letters. Sometimes an image just pops into my head and I have to paint it quickly before the inspiration disappears. It's not the thought itself that counts, but the feeling or emotions I experience. A picture that is painted without feelings is just like a soulless body.
Sometimes I just think about a particular topic that is currently occupying my life and from this I quickly create a few sketches in everyday life that reflect my state and worries. These sketches later form the basis for unique pictures.
I like painting with oil paints. I love how the paint "lives". It is soft, gentle and creates beautiful fractures. Mixing colors with oil paints is like meditating at the same time for me. I also love that the paint is "heavy". I can literally feel it in my hand, as if you are not painting with it but creating sculptures with clay.
When the picture is dry, it looks lively and three-dimensional, you can practically see how it was created. Since I paint a lot with different spatulas, you can clearly see the artist's marks. I also love the way it feels under your fingertips.
I want my art to give warmth to the people who look at it, to allow them to give free rein to their true feelings. To make people feel as good as if they were still happy children.
The topic of interpersonal relationships interests me a lot, especially the relationship between parents and children. This bond is very strong and has a strong influence on the kind of people the children become later.
I am a wife, sister, mother, daughter and granddaughter and I see the world through different eyes. I understand my parents and at the same time the feelings of my children, because I can still remember my childhood feelings well. It's a bit crazy, but what I want to achieve through my art is that the people who come into contact with it simply become freer from everyday life and all their worries and take the time for their feelings and dreams.
Roswitha Sucker
My concept in art means expressing myself and passing on emotions.
I work primarily with acrylic and add accents with oil paints, chalk and pen. I don't start with a specific idea, but rather express the feelings that arise in the moment. And from this, the respective work is created.
An empty canvas fills up with the colors and images that have arisen in my stomach. I try to capture the moment with my hands - with a spatula, brush and warm fingertips. In this way, my feelings flow onto the canvas again and again. In a way, my feelings are transferred to the canvas.
For me, art shows the perception of human imagination, a sinking into oneself. And for me, art is what Theodor W. Adorno once described so aptly: "Art is magic, freed from the lie of being truth."
I hope that through my creative work everyone will find the courage to get involved with my art and art in general and experience the unexpected.
Maria Carolina Villasmil de Martens
I love abstract art, I love color. I like the way color interacts with the rest of the space. I'm into squares, lines, circles. I like perfection to be chaotic, art should be about distressing harmony. I am from South America and have a strong Caribbean influence and I like art deco very much so, these last pieces were a bit influenced by it.
I am very intentional. It all starts always with a color. I experiment for a long time with the piece, how the colors interact with each other and play with new techniques before I do the final piece. Sometimes beautiful accidents happen and I learn something. My canvas is actually never empty, I have the tendency to dirty everything up. And when I sit to work, I already know which color I am working on, I just fight my way in the result I am looking for. I am messy and chaotic, I have no respect for rules.
I like to work with different materials. I do macrame and ceramics, as well. I work with newspaper, love to make colorful Christmas wreath out of recycled newspaper, again is all about the color. I like to work on wood more than anything I find wood to be very novel and strong and wood seems to accept resin better than other materials. I manipulate a lot of the wood, I think it is very cool!!! Sometimes I reuse wood or other recycled materials. It depends on my intentions.
When I do a piece it is about me but when it goes somewhere else it's about how it makes them feel. How does it fill up the space where it is placed. I'll like to inspire positive things, I like to bring happiness and excitement. It shouldn't make anyone think but feel something. You know?? There, right in your face.
Claudia Boy
Everything happens spontaneously for me, I sit or stand in front of my canvas and never plan. It happens intuitively and experimentally, which doesn't mean that it always works:) What I do know in advance is which materials I want to use, as I often create collages. So it can happen that after a walk I find a feather and incorporate it, or sometimes eggshells. I love structures and the emotional experience of art. I often let colors flow and this creates an image or a gradient that I then work on.
I work with acrylic paints, ink and structural pastes, and also with marble powder. I generally paint in several layers and use acrylic varnish for the finish. I almost exclusively use palette knives, and I only define colourshapers with pens and brushes. I create structured works and processed materials in pictures, almost anything that can be found and is easy to work with. I work with colours that can be separated easily because I often use fluid techniques and create gradients.
Art helped me to find myself. It was a process in which I developed my own style step by step. I am often surprised by how a common thread runs through the works. The message is: mindfulness! There is so much to see. Discover the colorful life.
I am often surprised by what people discover in my work. Some find it wild and others see shapes and forms that I have not yet recognized. That touches me deeply.
Sebastian Merk
A blank canvas is first filled with many different colors and then further shaped. The most important thing is the contrast through shapes and colors that brings the picture to life.
I work mainly with acrylic paint, although I currently like to use spray paint to add accents. In some works I also use acrylic markers to emphasize contrasts and create shapes. With the markers or with the brush I write words on the canvas in the moment to express my feelings and to facilitate the connection between the viewer and the artwork.
My abstract paintings are based on the viewer's interpretation. However, it can be said that my works are about everyday life: love, responsibility, problems, feelings, life and death. I want to make people think and perhaps one or the other can identify with a painting.
Manuel Di Chiara
For me, art is a form of communication that should be available to everyone, which is why I prefer to use the figurative style. My pictures are what you see, without any superstructure!
I usually start with photo documentations that I make during my travels.
From hundreds of photos on a topic, I select the best and use the right editing and lighting to develop my acrylic paintings.
I prefer to work with acrylic paints on canvas, but I also like to use oil paints, varnishes and, for some projects, inks.
What interests me about the colors is their consistency and plasticity, which help me to best represent the subject. The colors are used without dilution, so they still look strong and vibrant even after years.
I hope that through my art I can raise awareness about port work and maritime stories.
This project began in Naples in 2000 with images of city life and then focused on the port context. From there it continued to other port cities, each with its own relationship to water.
Sinikka Harms
My idea of art is that the viewer/listener is opened up to a world that makes it possible to feel emotions that are sometimes difficult to evoke in everyday life. For me, art means emotion, not the pure understanding of technique or questioning a possible deeper meaning of the artist. My creative process begins by placing the canvas on my easel and leaving it there for a while to give it and me space. Sometimes it's a few minutes, sometimes a day. First I start with the primer. I use oil paints for this, just as I do for the 'final image'. Sometimes I keep the primer in the colors of the 'finished' image, sometimes I choose exactly the contrasting colors to achieve a different depth of the image.
I work mainly with oil on canvas. I try to use only the basic colors, as well as white and black. I love the process of mixing and finding colors myself. It is always a surprise to see how even a 'single drop' changes the color. I like to play with that and also like to be inspired in the process. This means that sometimes I have a color concept in mind and deviate from it while I am mixing my colors.
The oil paint gives my pictures a depth that I love. I mainly use the spatula technique and painting in different layers. The primer I painted beforehand also plays a role here.
I want to make people happy with my pictures.
There is no direct message in my pictures, but rather my creative process and my love for colors and their interaction.
Stefanie Woschek
My pictures always first appear in my head. This process can take a long time, months, years, or it can happen very quickly; I have no influence over this. My thoughts are naturally influenced by the environment and so it can happen that an idea slowly (or quickly) develops from this, which then forms into a message that I then want to depict visually. So I have "something on my mind" that I want to communicate to the viewer, just like musicians or writers. The musician has the notes, the writer has the language and I have the colors.
And this is exactly where the challenge begins! I only have a limited space - the canvas - and all the colors have to work together here...of course, that's not so easy, because it's not just the color that matters, but also how much of that color is in the room and, above all, where in the room! Color, surface (dimensions) and space are the main problems that every painter has to face, whether they want to or not! And the picture is always right! As a painter, you can wish for and imagine as much as you want...if the picture doesn't want it, then it doesn't want it.
As a painter, you experience feelings like anger, powerlessness, annoyance, helplessness, despair... and after hours of work you are ready to give up everything... then suddenly something works... and you are grateful, "cured" of your urge to dominate everything, to control everything... and you surrender to the will of the picture. Humility is the magic word!
Over the years I have developed a technique using tissue paper that gives the picture a beautiful materiality. The quality of acrylic paints has improved a lot, but I also use a medium to create a silky sheen. I don't use varnish at all because it just makes the picture shiny. You don't need varnish to make colors "shine" either; the paint can do that all by itself if you use good quality with lots of pigment and know how to mix it.
My main materials are canvas, acrylic paints, a polymer as a painting medium, real hair brushes and tissue paper. In a picture we create an illusion, namely that it is three-dimensional, although there are only two dimensions: a height and a width - depth is missing. But it is precisely this depth that we urgently need in a picture and that we must/can create "artificially": through painting techniques, through colors and through the material. It should support me in my painting process so that I can create exactly the expression in the picture that I intend.
Does my art have an influence on the world? That's a big word, the "world"! I am sure that my pictures have an influence on the buyer's world; I have had the experience that buyers contact me years after the purchase and say that they are still happy with the picture or that it has even helped them to deal with a stroke of fate better. That alone makes me happy, of course, even though I had the best part: I was able to paint it and have all the exciting experiences in the process that help me develop as an artist. Development is the most important thing, as is the process - the finished picture is just a "by-product" so to speak!
Yes, I have a message when I paint. I have something on my mind, a comment, a dream, a wish that I want to communicate to the viewer. It can also be criticism, for example criticism of the way we treat our environment, which I expressed in my series "My world - your world". The series comprises 28 works and was originally created out of my desire to deal with the topic of "traditions". This then led to pictures on the topic of the environment. It is important to let go, to give space to an original idea, to develop further. Surrendering is difficult, but absolutely necessary in creative processes.
But my message does not have to be a current topic, I also like to think up (autobiographical) stories myself, write them down and paint pictures to go with them, such as in my series "The bird and the Bee" (a romantic novella about faith, love and passion), which includes 22 works, or the series "The magic letter box" with 17 works, about the art of rediscovering love or my reflections on the topic of "time" in the series "All these days - TIME" (16 works) and last but not least the series "Architectural stories" with 25 works on the topic of "space/openings".
I don't paint reality as it is, but my perception of it! Likewise, my pictures always have a title that supports my thoughts and that comes about naturally during the painting process.
Birte Marie Güler
I do street art. I identify with my portraits of models and paint/spray or stick them in places that mean something to me and let the portraits 'speak' for me. I also work in the studio because that's where I cut the stencils for the portraits and develop the images that I later spray outside or stick as pasteups.
To start with, I find a photo of a model - usually on the Internet - or I look specifically for a picture. (It has to meet certain criteria, otherwise it doesn't appeal to me: the face has to have a certain expression; the pose is important; the clothing also plays a role.) Then I make stencils from them and spray them on paper or canvas after I have designed the background or surface. I spray or paint this with acrylic varnish or acrylic paint. Sometimes I use watercolors on paper. I combine techniques.
Acrylic paint / spray cans; acrylic paint; paper for stencils; watercolors; I love the direct color and opacity of the spray cans; but I also use transparent spray paint and watercolor; colors are 'energy' for me; sometimes I use filler as a base on a canvas, which creates a rough feel, like a concrete wall; my pictures are created layer by layer
My art has no influence on the world, but on the individual. I don't have a political message like many other street artists. I actually work as an expression of myself. I'm happy when people discover my work and have the impression that the image enriches the place or changes the mood of the place for the better or makes it lively or even magical. That's why the locations play a role. An abandoned, bare wall is lonely in itself - with an image on it, it comes to life and hopefully becomes a little more beautiful. You leave your mark. The longing to go somewhere or to be taken there is contained in the content (in the title and the image) and at the same time actually in the works outside.
Duration of the exhibition: 06.09.2019 to 05.12.2019
Location: GRACE DENKER GALLERY, Hammerbrookstraße 93, 20097 Hamburg.
Opening: 06.09.2019 at 18:30