About my work

german version

»My artistic works are accidental finds –

picked up during numerous walks

in the woods of my right and left brain.«

My painting usually begins with the unintentional stroke, the surface, something wiped – until recognizable appears and becomes the image. Associative formulations follow, a title.

To work intuitively is pure devotion to the thought-free design. It is the desire to follow the spontaneous gesture and discover an image. This way of working gives me a feeling of existential freedom.

Spherical escapes

To look and to want to discover something, I know from early childhood days. I lay alone in my bed while voices and laughter came through the wall. I remember how I discovered the eyes of the wood grain. How rigidly they looked and how it pulled me in the stomach.

I dreamed myself into the drawings of the 50s wallpaper, felt the symmetry of the stucco with my eyes, observed the shadow play of the curtains, meandering water stains on the ceiling… I discovered shapes, faces, animals, grimaces. Sometimes they were crowding me and it was hard to look away. They kept me company and caused feelings for which I had no words.

Irregularities, depressions, stains – traces of organic life and transience. Likewise outlines in the light, changing structures…. Today, as in the past, they open me the access to spherical escapes. Worlds that tell me stories. Into which I can dive and in which I can lose myself. They put worries and plans into perspective. Let me enjoy the moment and bring me to new thoughts and ideas.

The aesthetics of the walls

There was another period that shaped my aesthetic. Again, walls and irregularities played an important role. Starting in the late 70s, we designed posters in an art and graphics initiative, which were later pasted on walls in the urban area. Which was forbidden. As was spraying or painting slogans.

I was fascinated by the wall graffiti. Their provocative, sometimes fantastic creativity. Their anarchistic wordplay. They were unmissable, which I attributed mainly to the coarseness of the hastily thrown brushstrokes. And the dripping spray paint. I was so interested in all this that I designed typefaces for walls. Of course, I also designed a spray alphabet for poster printing. With lick noses – of course.

Successful wall slogans were passed on at demonstrations. And the graphic »Stell Dir vor es ist Krieg, und Keiner geht hin.« (Imagine there’s a war on, and nobody’s going), which I published in 1981 and modeled on graffiti, went viral during the oppressive years of the Cold War.

Even if I took a different artistic path over time, I always bow to the street artists with my art. The people who – mostly away from the established art scene – spontaneously express something in streets and on asphalt.

Get started

„There is nothing good unless you do it“ – According to this motto, it was also true: No more ideological debates! Get going when the impulse is there. Just do it. A sparkling idea. Spray paint, perhaps a stencil, at the right moment. That was enough to express oneself. The wall background itself was part of the message.

Consequently, in the end, everything it could be painted on was also part of the message. I threw cursory strokes and scribbles on wood or cardboard. Then I added table tops and construction wood. I discovered in them again hints of eyes or sceneries and completed them to pictures.

It was the time of the colorful painting of the New Wilds that inspired me. I liked their insouciance. Their obsession. The expressive, intense.

Thje beginning and the dark

Then I wanted to get away from the colorful, as if it were only surface. The world underneath became more attractive. I ventured into the dark, deep black. Worked mostly on wood that could withstand something. I began to scrape images and figures out of the layers of paint. Like an archaeologist who suspects that he will discover an unknown figure in the rubble and uncover it.

The hidden life

The deeper I dug, the more personal things came to light. From fast-drying, chalky, sprayed and smudged layers of paint as well as in material collages emerged what drove me. Reflections of existential themes: Anger, guilt, shame, conflicts, war and inhumanity, strangeness and alienation. And people showed up. My father, a teacher, their force and coldness. Assault, threat, grief, separation, loneliness…

Against the powerlessness

At the same time I discovered self-irony and laughing at myself as a way to defuse the feelings of powerlessness. Likewise absurd mockery, which I secretly formulated pointedly. Dadaistic grotesques, so as not to go insane.

New artistic freedom through new materials

At the same time I started painting on transparent plexiglass panes and construction foils.  This opened up new perspectives for me. I played with the transparency, painted surfaces no longer completely, left places free, worked on the plastic from two sides and explored so new picture effects. Light and emptiness, the space behind it, the depth effect expanded a picture by new dimensions.

Digital possibilities

A new addition is that today I often draw the first black strokes on the iPad for smaller formats. Printed on transparent film, they are later painterly further processed.

Through the material and my current painting technique, the aesthetics of my work has changed. The nature of my image and theme finding, however, has remained the same.

The underside of the painting

Similar to reverse painting on glass, I paint almost exclusively on the reverse side of the film. This prevents air from getting between the paint and the film, which results in a more durable color brilliance.

I work therefore side-inverted, whereby the result – viewed from the front (the „right“ side) – shows the underside of the painting. The first, spontaneous, sometimes involuntary or clumsy painting strokes thus remain visible when the painting is completed. I often use bold black at the beginning. Dominant and picture-determining.

The seismograph

Sometimes I start with decidedly powerful stroke. Then again it is uncertain-perilous. Almost as if my arm, with brush, palette knife or pen in hand, were something like a seismograph, recording the dynamics of the shifts in the earth’s interior by putting lines, jags and tremors on paper.

The stranger in me

It happens again and again that a work, when it is finished, surprises me. Due to an inner necessity I have finished it, but at the end I cannot find access to it. The picture is mysterious. As if I had captured something fleeting. Stranger, which I do not like to face. That I don’t like to look into the eyes.

There are even works that I end up being angry about. But most of the time it’s those that ultimately turn out to be particularly valuable to me.

It’s like a dream that I shake my head over after waking up. Such dream experiences are fleeting and urge me to interpret them as quickly as possible. The pictures, on the other hand, are more patient. They go into a folder for the time being, until they are looked at again.

My vendor’s tray

At some point, almost all paintings receive titles. They arise spontaneously, associatively. They follow no logic and need no explanation from my point of view. Unlike in the past, I am no longer concerned with sending a message to the world. They are intuitive analogies. They serve me as an anchor, as a treasure trove, as an archive of my inner world and history.

Invitation

I have shown my work only rarely and usually only in small circles. Creating was always more important to me. Only recently I like to let go of my pictures. They push to the light and I wish for a broad resonance. I would like them to be understood as an invitation to pause and for personal classification. As a bridge to recognition.

Connecting is still valid as a description of my pictures today as in the past, what I formulated in 2005 in reference to the title of a solo exhibition (1992): „My artistic works are accidental finds – picked up during numerous walks in the woods of my right and left brain.“

Hamburg, March 2021

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