Mirror Landscapes

 

My birthplace Lohmen, a small village in Saxony, Germany, is part of the national park "Saxon Switzerland", a rocky landscape at the Czech border, intersected by the river Elbe. More or less knowingly, I walked on the paths already followed by Caspar David Friedrich from my early childhood days on. The sea of misty clouds surrounding sandstone rocks in the early mornings, a cool haze and the damp, mossy stone walls, wandering light-points flitting through tree tops, spider nets full of dew drops, the smell of dust and rain. My dog Isis exploring this wonderful natural maze with me.

As I am exploring nature, I always look for something new. Even as I follow similar paths over and over again, the impressions are never quite the same. An archive of colour compositions and patterns of light opens up to the sensitive observer. Miraculous structures of plants and stones, cloudy mountains and the dynamics of water offer an infinite treasure for artists and nature lovers alike. But the landscape does not only leave a visual impression. It creates a feeling, a mood that touches me, makes me stop and breathe, listening - to nature, to myself. The landscape becomes a mirror of myself. I find shelter in the melancholy of the evening, in the tense before a thunderstorm or in the gentle calm of a lake that is warmed by the rising sun of a summer morning.As my feelings mirror the different landscapes I travel, so my landscape paintings mirror my feelings in life.

Adding geometrical shapes and patterns I extend the natural formations. Like coloured fragments of glass in a kaleidoscope, they alter the habitual visual behaviour and allow the viewer to wander. These disturbances add a fragile element to the beauty of landscapes. Being and passing away, the finiteness of being. All this can be felt directly in nature.As in nature, the change in ourselves is a constant, indeed the most reliable, fact in life.

Like flying, sharp-edged pieces, the coloured planes move through the almost untouched, often deserted space. In the landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, a person points his back to us and invites us to enter the scene. In my paintings, the overlays prevent the impression of being safe. Parts of the landscapes remain obscured to the eye of the beholder and opaque.