"the moon has risen" Painting

Silja Ritter, the painter born in "Altes Land" near Hamburg in Germany, has been awarded several scholarships after studying at the College of Fine Arts in Hamburg. She received one from the DAAD for the Ecole Nationale Supérieure der Beaux-Arts, Paris. "During my one-year stay in Paris (DAAD Graduate Scholarship), I studied the patterns and symbols of oriental rugs. Starting from a dream, I integrated personal things into the system of oriental rug by stitching, painting, labeling, cutting and projecting. In my dream two real plants, similar to sea anemones, grew on an Oriental rug with a floral pattern. These plants camouflaged themselves in the pattern of the carpet. I played with them. For me, this dream is a picture of the feminine power, hidden in a traditional system." Her painting, which is as powerful as it is subtle, life-affirming, and at the same time poetically delicate, an abstraction determined by lines, color, and rhythm, a painting that seeks to reveal the mystery of nature. With generous curves she creates forms that, born of the inner rhythm, express their temperament and present mood. "The painting and the life process involve the constant becoming and passing away. To admit this process and make it visible is my concern in all my pictures. Trusting in this work process, I approach a reality that connects the outer world with its concrete shapes, colors, and structures, and my inner world with the knowledge of birth, eros, and death."