IcelandGlow 24 Painting

My name is Annette Goessel. I’m an abstract painter from Berlin, Germany. An E-mail conversation about glaciers, elves and “lyrical agitations”... between Annette Goessel and cultural journalist Kathrin Hondl. KH: You grew up in Lübeck, studied in Stuttgart and Vienna and have now been living in Berlin for a quite a while.What was it that brought you to Iceland a few years ago? AG: It was twelve years ago in Berlin that my family and I were invited by Icelandic friends to visit their country. We were lucky enough to have enjoyed a journey that was very particular, personal and adventurous. That was probably the reason Iceland became a “love at first sight” country for me and I became an “Icelandophile”. KH: Iceland is quite popular with many people as a tourist destination. What was it that interested you artistically? Why did you decide to work there? AG: It's true, there is plenty of tourism in Iceland by now. A lot is changing in the country. Nevertheless, there are still largely uninhabited landscapes. Color harmonies, structures, light direction, glacier formations, lava fields, snow, water, rock ... Back in my Berlin studio, the visible and invisible forces of nature had a lasting effect on me. When I was given the opportunity to work as an artist in residence in Kolsstaðir, I was right in the middle of this Nordic materiality. KH: How did these forces of nature, this Nordic materiality affect your painting? In the past you often used metallic colors – gold, copper, silver – in your paintings. Do the natural forces of Iceland have anything to do with their disappearance? AG: When I was working with metallic paints, I lived with different references and placed myself in a different context.The main theme was ornament, and I painted silver, copper, gold as representative colors par excellence, in geometric meanders. After my first visit to Iceland I painted two further large paintings with silver running down the canvas. Maybe these are “transitional images”.But then I deliberately distanced myself from this painterly system of unchanging formulations. I wanted to re-enter somewhere entirely different. Iceland was after all an exit from complexity, a quest for new painterly possibilities. KH: An exit from complexity? Does this beautiful wording also hint at a certain “back to nature”? AG: Or back to the beginning? Or resigned happiness?Historically, the glorification of the empty landscape is something relatively new.