This heterogeneous collection comprises works based on photographs that served as a source of inspiration and, technically, as material resource. The scope of variation of the original photograph is very broad. It reaches from including fragments of the photograph in the painting to deriving from it only the color palette for free painterly exploration. Thus, re-presentation is not the issue. Outside of my own photography I had the privilege of using photos taken by nature, bird and insect lover Martin Ray, Gloucester, MA, in particular for Photo-Paintings nos. 4-8, 10-11, 16-25, and 34-35.

Photopaintings

This heterogeneous collection gathers improvisational works from early 2021. The artist celebrates the deep potentials of Studio Artist software as well as his new-found ways, strengthened by an assiduously adventurous 10-year practice, to work ‘from scratch’, based on spur-of-the-moment intuitions, in an experimental way. 

Improvisations 2021

The works in this collection are based on animation stills deriving from the author’s Cinema work in 2010-12. The marriage of cinematography and painting preserves the stills’ architecture but decidedly alters their character.

Animation Stills Paintings

This collection originates in the intention to let go of painterly accuracy and top-down design to enable instantaneous inspiration to have a say. It pays homage to the sense of color and design of Richard Diebenkorn whose work inspired it. Working digitally, the artist felt released from self-imposed strictures, enough to forget about perfection such as clear separation of colors and lines. These compositions often embody free, childlike drawings, used either to enliven surfaces, create imaginary space, break regularity, compete with color values, create patterns, or tell a story. Some of works feature social commentary.

Homage to R. Diebenkorn

This collection comprises work done with large, multi-colored wet brushes. In the focus of attention is the structure of the brush itself that defines the work’s texture and the individual stroke that makes the brush speak. Here, brushes represent nothing but themselves. 

Streaming

This collection comprises works resulting not from a single but multiple ‘presets’ selected from the artist’s software task environment (Studio Artist). Each preset is associated with a specific type of brush (which can be changed) as well as color and texture parameters (which can also be changed). The artist has made use of those presets he felt were either complementary or contrasting, sometimes both. As a result, works in this collection are characterized by contrast and opposition which makes for an intriguing challenge to create a unified pictorial space.

Brush Variety

This collection comprises pieces deriving from a merger of different types of brushes within a single work. The challenge was to create a unified artwork by way of differently structured and textured brushes, whether these are complimentary to, or stand in contrast with, each other. The motto for working in this fashion might be said to be "out of many, one”.

Brush Merger

This collection comprises work resulting from designing (in software) large brushes quickly filling a frame with a small number of strokes rather than detailed brushwork. As the result, outcomes are, to various degrees, less painterly than architectural and veer into the domain of illustration or decoration. The esthetic goal becomes that of crafting a unity from heterogeneous brush output. The artist needs to work diligently to optimize image complexity without losing coherence, and to counter flatness for the sake of creating a vibrant pictorial space. To do so he needs to completely trusts his hand to carry quickly what can barely be planned.

Broadest Strokes

Works in this collection result from experimenting with broad brush strokes that significantly change the dynamics of the pictorial space. They showcase what happens to pictorial forces such as color, texture, shape, and line once they are no longer forced into serving goals of representation. They teach especially beginners a lesson about elements of painting that need to be mastered in order to bring their equilibrium or disequilibrium under conscious control.

Broader Strokes

This collection comprises studies in which the artist tries his hand on broad brush strokes, intent on changing his way of working. Colors are highly textualized frequently resulting in opaqueness. Individual pieces are numbered rather than titled. It is an experimental series for breaking new esthetic ground.

Broad Strokes

Works in this collection are inspired by the 2019-20 Covid pandemic. They attempt to capture the manifold emotions that arise when feeling grabbed by an invisible enemy which could be a loved one. Some of them envision the structure of the invading virus itself. Others convey a sense of how the virus may operate, while still others capture subliminal fears about becoming its victim. All works are conceived as an entry gate to liberation from the pandemic.

Pandemic

This collection comprises works of great internal intensity that point to events creating inner and outer disturbances. They reflect, in part,  surging public emotions during the time of the 2020 pandemic, in part do they point to regular life situations and well-known illusions. All works share a sense of instability and heightened awareness regarding what comes across public media. As in most of my work, I am painting 'states of mind'.

Perturbations

A collection of unusual scenes triggering astonishment if not disbelief but claiming to be more real than real.

Fantasmata

This collection comprises works that invite short titles pointing to complex configurations. They are left to the viewer to puzzle over. To the artist, they felt like outcomes of another step toward the mastery of the digital medium.

Insights

This collection forms the second set of images associated with the artist's German poetry, continuing alphabetically with titles starting with the letter M. The viewer has access to acoustic readings of some of the poems and the text, German and English, of others.

Part II, German Poetry Project

The works in this collection are all inspired by my German poetry collected in 'Schlesische Sprachschmiede' (Silesian Language Smithy). The viewer is invited to hear acoustic readings of the poetry and/or read translations of the poem's German text into English.. 

German Poetry Project

A collection of digital paintings that emphasizes approximations, unclear boundaries, transitions, and uncertainty.

Approximations

This collection continues the exploration of lines as carriers of expression beyond Life Lines #1 and #2, using acrylic tools for establishing a new kind of painting.

Life Lines #3

This collection comprises works that liberate the line as a carrier of expression further, beyond Life Lines #1

Life Lines #2

This collection comprises works dominated by expressive lines that by themselves define the character of the work. 

Life Lines #1

This collection comprises work centered around the gift of lines to create new realities across conventional genres of painting.

Power Lines No. 2

This collection is a gathering of black & white digital graphics whose theme refers to my Silesian childhood which ended in 1945.

Silesia of My Mind

The works in this collection represent a solo show at the Rockport Art Association, Rockport, MA, USA, in December of 2018. They are photo montages moving between photography, painting, and graphics,. are conceived as an homage to the elderly of Lisbon, Portugal, and elderly anywhere.

Lisbon Portraits

This collection of works uses the power of lines to explore a multitude of aspects of the human condition.

Otto Laske's Art Collections