Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Watercolor

Watercolor, ink and gouache painting have been longtime favorite genres for me, even actively. My interest grew out of the enormous public attention in post-war Germany towards the previously suppressed and persecuted Expressionists, painters like Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej Jawlensky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Emil Nolde, Otto Mueller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, to name some.

Especially Emil Nolde - an accomplished oil painter as well - pushed the art of watercolor to a height not seen since William Turner's days in England. Nolde was a Northern German - or a Southern Dane if you want, since his home village today is part of Denmark. As as a man of the coastal flatlands he had an eye for the peculiar appeal of North Sea land- and seascapes, especially for the dramatic potential of clouds, waves, dispersed and filtered light and its reflection on water, tidal flats and wet beaches.
Whereas Southern Germany has the Alps and the central parts often present themselves with picturesque, undulating country, the Northern Germans (and I am one of them) often suffer from an inferiority complex. This on account of the boring flatness of our area. Nolde actually did a lot to make my generation meet our land, skies, coasts, waterways with fresh eyes and a certain degree of proud elation.


And then there was Siegward Sprotte, another artist active in the utmost northwestern corner of Germany, the island of Sylt. There are definitely some correspondences to Nolde, but Sprotte developed a style all his own. German Expressionism and Oriental influences merge in intriguing ways. Sprotte's work was popular among young adults of the 60s and 70s, when a number of his paintings and watercolors could be found as posters in art shops and Ikea warehouses.

Both Nolde and Sprotte impressed and inspired me. Painfully conscious of my lack of drawing talent, I nevertheless ventured into watercolor painting. Many of my pictures came about outdoors in a fast and at times feverish way. Somehow it was my business idea to pay little attention to pigments, brushes and other equipment. Not as an outspoken philosophy or even belief, rather as a result of practical considerations. I would never have dared to paint a single picture if I had burdened myself with the concerns that I felt belonged into the domain of truly talented, trained and aspiring artists.
I was in it for the initial stillness in nature, the following meditative evaluation of what was around me, and then the rush of excitation, trying to establish with washes, brushstrokes and flows what I deemed to be the key design feature of the picture to be. A procedure at best like a dance, often a fight, seldom a controlled progression...

The following samples of my work span over roughly thirty years. The first picture below (Onsala Coast, 2001) is one of my favorites and in a way typifies my personal ideal: a "bold" expressionist approach with sweeping, unsophisticated strokes applied in an environment of flows and washes in need of secondary treatment, thus breaking up threats of a harmony that can make watercolors neat, but boring. Palettewise I try to stay close to the natural colors around me, most likely an influence from photography. I am satisfied when my coarse struggle results in an almost photographic realism in essence, despite the disregard for detail. I remember that at this occasion I was pleased with the rendition of the two islands straight ahead that had fallen in deep shadow just prior to heavy rain. And rain there was that day, you can see the traces of lighter and heavier drops on the paper. Had there been more, it would have destroyed the painting. It was a case of protecting it hastily and just in time.


















No comments:

Post a Comment