drawing – homage to fragility

I write in drawings, with lines, with colour, with the gestures of my hands. In drawing, my writing slows down. White plays an important role, white is a pause: a moment of hold in a gesture.

I draw for this wonderful planet. I draw to awaken the memory of the fact that we humans are a group of mammals, a mere accumulation of cells forming a living organism. I draw in the consciousness of our atmosphere, which has sanctioned such a sumptuous form of life and beauty.

My drawings are a short direct contact, skin to skin, because they are my way of saying things that I don’t know how to say otherwise. Before I can start drawing, I gather time. I presume that each viewer of my drawings receives a part of this gathered time.

fourmis – ants

For the first time in a while, I am sitting alone in the train, up north, in winter – no one with me, no conversations, no floods of impressions – I look out of the window and let the snowscapes drift by as in a long monotonous film in white, with small interruptions, black, grey or in hints of colour, doubtless real things, that I only perceive as lines and blurs. And, of a sudden, I sink into the white. Pause.

In the pause appears an old and yet still new image in front of my eyes: when and, most of all, why did I do my first free drawing, which I then signed?

It all began with the zigzag course of an ant on a bright tiled terrace – with my study of this itinerary, the confused and yet clearly targeted movement of this passage on a white background. Initial small drawings followed suit, consistently in a change of location, between observation and memorising outside, and drawing inside, in the quiet of the room.

Curiosity led me to read, to investigate, and to search. What sort of a population is this that lives amid, between, and with us – that exists in a parallel world? The sum of my learning, together with an immersion in the existence of ants, underwent a transformation and led to intuitive action. The result of which was the gesture of drawing. Drawing turned into intuition. That is how I started to draw.

books

I am surrounded by piles of books, in shelves, on the floor, on the tables, in the corners. I start reading them or I read them through, some even several times. But there is always one that becomes my steady companion, sometimes over years.

I put it at the top of the pile on my table, take it with me on my travels, slide it under my pillows. It is as if it were protecting me or reminding me of my dreams. From these, my companions, I quote.

With this reading matter in my head, my images develop. Thus, behind each one of my drawings there is a word, a question, a circumstance, a scientific phenomenon, a myth – my titles provide a clue to this lineage.

sensuality

Sensuality exercises unheard power over us. We experience it, however, only when we slow down, when we consent to silence or simply to boredom.

Only with a long while can concentration finally set in, and only here does sensuality find its fertile soil.

Should we enable it to follow its path to this breeding ground, it cannot be harnessed and explosively unleashes life – it beats inaudibly from the inside against our skin. Just like Max Frisch expresses in Homo Faber in a single sentence: “Wherever one spits, it germinates”.

lobsters – blue is a warm colour

Why of all things did I draw lobsters?

Still lifes fascinated me already as a child, these still lifes that represent edibles so close and in detail, like for instance lemons or peaches, full and lush, in such a colour that I would best like to bite into them. And in these images, bright red lobsters would appear; I remembered that.

I searched for photos of these animals to study them, alive, raw, but also cooked. In restaurants and fish shops, I observed these blue-grey creatures with their beautiful tranquil movements in the chilly water, enamoured by the play of colours of their bodies and by these mad structures of their shell. And of course the question arose – how do these gentle grey-blue nuances turn into such bright orange through the process of cooking?

This question rotates in my head, in turn with the colours and movements of the live animals, whilst I am drawing.