Iceland Glow Painting

The painting itself is 9,5 x 9,5 cm and comes in a black aluminium-frame with passepartout. In august this year I was artist in residence in a small village on Iceland called Kolsstaðir. It was my third stay on Iceland, which stimulated and drove the progress of my work in interaction with Berlin. The silence of the island which decelerated the running time impressed me deeply. Alongside I was mesmerized by a very popular radio program of the national radio station of Iceland. It took me into the everyday life of this country with all its local peculiarities. This radio program is the weather report which is broadcasted every Sunday morning. I listen to it on Iceland and in Berlin as well. Listening to it became the most important ritual during the genesis of „Iceland Glow“. That the weather report is sending information from all weather stations in the country which are arranged in a circle along the Icelandic seashore showed me the huge meaning of the weather for Icelandic culture. This was the way how I stayed in touch with Icelandic everyday life also during my paintings in Berlin. I felt as if I was a part of Icelandic community; I did not felt as tourist or as guest. The series of my pictures “Iceland Glow” I consider as a work in progress. The basis of the exhibition, the first sketches were developed on the island. The reflection about the work I continued in my own large atelier in Berlin. In memory of my impressions on Iceland the big works on canvas were home-grown. Assembled behind small, square passe-partouts my pictures give insights in moments of unique space and time constellations which converge here. Volcanic lava, glowing mosses and lichens, weathered rocks, elf stones and ice formations seem to be microscopic tiny elements in a mystic universe. Sometimes abstract in their shape and order, sometimes figurative in their individual appearing, they are in between an organic dialogue with each other though. In that small pictures I intended to minimize more and more and I removed the play-fulness from the pictures in order to allow more space within these small frames. One can say, the elements now are „aerated“ by the dynamic of the weather conditions, in a constant exchange with the space that surrounds them. Imprints of organic material give an impression of the structure and of the subtle materiality of the lava fields. Also the Nordic light which allows more space to humans and the encounters with the painter Per Kirkeby as well as with Páll Guðmunds-son were pushing me towards that kind of painting I pursue at present. As a separate island with unique climatic conditions and geologic occurrences Iceland is a closed cosmos, a world on its own.