new category: artblog

Hello world,

I again found great pleasure in painting. Quite a number of paintings have been done recently. In fact I’m writing this, while waiting for a canvas to dry. It all started again after going to an exhibition of modern art and enjoying some great paintings. I want to use this platform to share my work and my view to certain topics, where I find it could help others. I am mainly into abstract art right now. I sometimes struggled a bit starting a painting. Great pieces of art have been formed by techniques, which seem to be unadequate at first glance.

Jackson Pollock dripped paint uncontrolled over canvas, Gerhard Richter blurred fine paintings Ad Reinhardt made canvases appear only black when you look only briefly at them and Mark Rothko painted undefined boxes of „some“ color. All this can be theoretically done by everyone. It can destroy a nice white canvas or generate a masterpiece worth tens of millions of Euros. What makes the difference between both is often hard to quantify. One thing is obvious: those paintings show bravery. The artist was not afraid to „spoil“ a huge canvas. I found this feeling blocked me in the beginning. For a long time my best painting was one I did only to relax. I didn’t care for the outcome. Nevertheless the result was in my opinion unreached for a few years. Finally being back to this point a door opens for many paintings I enjoy painting and watching at.

Here I’ll show my paintings to you. I hope you’ll enjoy watching at them or can maybe learn something for your work – in case you paint. The first lesson, which helped me very much to improve my paintings was:

Just dare!

Enjoy art.

Paintings coming up soon

I have been quite productive during the last weeks and generated a number of paintings. Some I consider to be „real pictures“, others just studies. But also they were made to try some things and I learned while doing them. So I’ll also present them here. As well as some general thoughts and hints to you out there…

Painting for fun

After talking about the long past with few paintings and the newer past with more paintings, I like to present the painting with which it all started again – the first oil painting in years. I painted this without having a clear result in mind. I just wanted to paint for fun and really enjoyed it. Somehow this pictures always reminds me on the fun in the creation process. This picture has clear flaws and I don’t know, if people consider it to be good, but for me it’s my favourite.

Untitled (2008)

oil on canvas

60cm x 80cm

(not for sale)

Learning from Jackson Pollock

If you search for paintings of Jackson Pollock you’ll find his „drip paintings“. Liters of low viscosity paint splashed on huge canvases. Fans enjoy looking at those paintings and being able to imagine how Jackson was „painting“ them. But have a look at those paintings. Couldn’t you also do this? I think you could. And if you could and others can, why does someone pay 140 million dollars for one of those paintings, instead of just doing the same for less than 1000$. Obviously because he wants to have an original Pollock. Maybe also because he also especially fell in love with this painting and none of those paintings is accurately reproduceable. Not even Jackson Pollock could do this, would he still be alive. Where exactly how much paint drips to, how they lie above each other is all randomness. But having a close look one will find beauty in it. That is one great thing of abstract art – using randomness.

Painting with chance

After being not happy with the previous paintings I tried a new way. On this picture I allowed the paint to mix on the canvas and even supported it by squeezing and pushing. I actually had it all covered when doing so and couldn’t control the result. Removing the cover from the paint generated nice root like structures and even influenced the way the colors mixed. After I long time this was a great picture. There are so many details, which couldn’t have been created intentionally. Just have a look at the region around the bright blue spot in the top right. Allow chance to play a role in your paintings and you’ll get surprised. This actually is no big surprise 😉

Yellow on the left (2013)

acrylic on canvas

50cm x 60cm

(not for sale)

Painting without fun

I very much enjoyed the first painting I made. It took a long for me to realize, that it was not because of my skill and especially not because of the motive. It was purely because of the feelings I had when painting it. The trials to generate other good pictures where in vain for years. Below you’ll find the only painting I kept for a few years. Some paintings got overpainted, most I destroyed. Even hear some corrections are visible, because I wasn’t achieving the result I wanted. I had to learn again to not care for the results, but for the process. The painting is a bit dusty – it needs some cleaning.

Untitled (2011)

oil on canvas

60cm x 80cm

Painting with color

Classic paintings combine the many shapes with many colors. In this painting I tried to focus only on the use of the colors. It’s easy to see the connection to Mark Rothko, a famous Latvia born US painter. His painting and paintings were very emotional. Rothko wanted to make the viewer feel like he did when painting. Due to his depression this would unfortunately make the ones who truly understand the picture cry.

What made Rothko paint like this was the experience when seeing the painting „Red Studio“ by Henry Matisse, where color and shape where separated. I find this painting technique very appealing. Especially for the early layers the lack of shapes forces to focus on the color and the effect when adding a new layer couldn’t be seen clearer. For me it doesn’t seem tempting to leave viewers of my paintings crying, so that the painting had to be drawn in a more joyful way. On the „thickest“ part, more than ten layers of paint have been applied over each other. Some thicker, but all let the underlying colors shine through.

two times red (2003)

oil on canvas

50cm x 60cm

Learning from Gerhard Richter

Germany born Gerhard Richter is consistently in the top 10 of most expensive selling artists. I adore his early picture paintings. Now he becomes more famous for his abstract works, which get sold for tens of millions of Euros. Looking at them one might ask where’s the skill of the artist in generating those pictures? Those skills are not only technical. Many famous pieces of abstract art don’t show the high technical level as the older art does. Abstract artists are not worse painters – think of Pablo Picasso, who was maybe the most skilled painter as a child. Still in his famous paintings other things are in focus. In abstract art other things are important, and they need other skills. Exactly this we can learn from Gerhard Richter.

The major skill is the courage to destroy the own painting. In his „Abstrakte Bilder“ (abstract paintings) he paints many layers, one after another. Each layer can completely destroy everything. Still he continues applying thick layers of paint on the canvas. In 2006 he painted over 100 hundred pictures called „Weiß“ (white), which he all finished with a thick white layer of paint almost covering everything which was done before. This courage allows you to create „big“ pictures, rather in terms of depth than in size. It’s nice, that at the same time this skill also gives courage. You don’t have to worry about your painting knowing that you can apply a new layer if needed. You still need to be aware of what you are doing, since you don’t want to start from sketch again and again, but this knowledge might take some pressure away.

The second skill now becomes obvious. You don’t want to paint on the same canvas for all your life. What you need to know is when the painting is finished. In my opinion this is the biggest skill of Gerhard Richter in his abstract art. If you have troubles with this, then just take it slow. Just hang the picture after each layer for one week somewhere where you often see it and make up you mind, if the picture needs another layer or not.

 

Twirl

Sometimes the unintentional and temporary things are very beautiful. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep this picture as it was. I’m trying to somehow „rescue“ it. Let’s see if I succeed.

– (2003)

acrylic on foil (this is actually neither a painting nor „storable“

30cm x 30cm

Painting for money

In my painting „Yellow on the left“ I intensly used colors. In this painting without title I tried to do the same but different. Also here I used much paint and intense colors. The contrast is more on smaller scales. Obviously I also added  brushwork. This picture is the first to be sold. It’s new owners liked how many and how intense colors I used. So far all my pictures (including this one) were painted just for fun. I don’t want to change this because I learned it would spoil the results, but it makes me think if I should look for other people interested in my paintings…

Untitled 1 (2013)

acrylic on canvas

50cm x 60cm

(sold)

red painting

As written previously I experimented with „hard-to-control painting techniques“. The results were nice colorful pictures, rich in details. Inspired by Gerhard Richter’s abstract painting 849-3 I also experimented with „squegeeing“. The aim was to get a picture which is not the most colorful, but strong in expression. For the first time also the title was found before I started working on the picture. The motive „Aggression“ is chosen to ensure creating a very strong painting. On the first glimpse I find this title makes sense. What I like very much about this technique is that when looking close there are so many details. Many also not aggressive. You’ll see that the painting is not just red, blue and white. Some of the color mixtures work extremely well. Also small amounts of silver color create appealing affects. The painting has the number 1, because I planned further experiments with this motive on a smaller scale.

Aggression 1 (2013)

acrylic on canvas

50cm x 60cm

 Lines and splash and blue

One piece of the slightly earlier work of mine. An experiment with lines, giving a geometric structures and splashes of red paint. Since it was too boring in white i added different shades of blue. Right now I’m thinking whether to keep it like this or add another layer.

Untitled (2011)

oil on canvas

60cm x 80cm

Learning to love the spatula

I’d say life is about learning. Doing painting I could learn more than I expected. Trying things for the first the result is often not exactly as expected, but with time you will very fast get closer. One thing to learn is to try new techniques. Here I present the first painting I did with a spatula. Actually it was not so far away from what I wanted. I went for an old, rubbish look, like old newspapers – torn, soaked with water and soil, unreadable but still some bright colors shining through. Obviously that’s not the most happy motive. Because I prefer making enjoyable paintings over depressive ones, I added that yellow  disc with color running down the painting. It should take the focus away from the spatula work, which still takes almost the whole canvas and will provide an interesting background once the eye wanders away from the yellow disc. It probably will only be visible after one or two seconds despite it’s huge area.

reflection of the sun (2013)

acrylic on canvas

50cm x 70cm

abstract oilpainting – seaside 1

I did a lot of experiments with different tools and techniques. To generate a oilpainting in between abstract and realistic I needed to combine many of them. The motive is an ocean and the sky above. Both are blue, both have areas tints and shades a bit of tones and mixed colors. The only difference between the sky and the ocean is the technique which is used to paint. One thing which can’t be seen, is the extreme difference in texture. When sweeping over the painting the sound of the sky area is completely different and much louder than the one the ocean. Maybe for many this is not important, I quite like the little extra in the haptic of the painting.

This oilpainting was done for my bedroom. Finding someone heavily interested in it made me give it away. I’ll probably end up making a new one for my bedroom.

Seaside 1 (2013)

oil on canvas

40cm x 50cm

(sold)

Painting at night

What can you do when you wake up very early in the morning and can’t find sleep? You are perfectly awake, but can’t arrive at work at 4pm, because the colleagues you need are sleeping in their beds? Since I’m posting this here, what I obviously did was painting. The result is the following:

Nightpainting

acrylic

30cm x 30cm

new abstract work

Another painting inspired by Gerhard Richter. I very much liked his colorful paintings covered by smeared black and white paint. When planning this I thought I’d like most a shiny color. What’s better then I color which most people correlate with a hot sun or burning fire. A clean orange and yellow behind a dirty smear of black, white and grey.  To make it a bit more interesting I added some structure to it.

Untitled 2 – 2013

acrylic

30cm x 40cm

Break

As you might have noticed, new articles were missing. Due to personal reasons (like vacation 😉 I neither had time to write nor to paint. This will last for a bit more time, but I hope to be able to give some updates soon. Until then:

Merry christmas and a happy new year!

More paintings from me you can find in my artblog. E.g. a green one.