familiar patterns 1 Painting

Artist Statement "˜The need for creativity has always been with me. There is such an intimacy and freedom, when I paint or rather when painting happens! It's not always pretty. At times it seems, that the most perfect thing is the white, clean and sqare canvas. Still there is something else there not yet visible, but slowly to be unveiled, and so the journey begins. It can be tremendously chaotic at first; it can also flow harmoniously from the start. It can feel destructive and constructive within a moment of time........always balancing light and dark to create something unique and beautiful.' Nartana During Nartana's formative years he frequented the Art Museums, which provided a sanctuary for a young man witness to a war-divided Germany. At the age of 16, he began his formal education in art at Fachoberschule fuer Gestaltung, followed by Fachhochschule fuer visuelle Kommunikation (College for Visual Communication). From childhood onwards Nartana painted. What began as a means of escape, became for him a method of meditation. The immediacy of paint provided Nartana with a medium through which he could encapsulate moments; recording, as you will in a diary, transient states of being; striving, always for the state of "˜no mind'. Prompted by an increasing dedication to his spiritual life Nartana left Germany and traveled with paint and brushes extensively throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas, eventually establishing himself as an artist and member of the Counsel or the Arts and the Society of Artists in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Nartana invites the viewer to engage on a more subconscious level, through form, texture, color and space, endeavoring to create a place in which viewers can enter into their own dialogue. His work has been exhibited in galleries in Aachen, Berlin, Amsterdam, India and throughout the Southwest of the US. Currently he's living and painting on Koh Samui, Thailand.