A new canvas

Hello there dear friends. It has been awhile but i am happy to be back. I have missed you all a lot. I'm happy too that 2011 is over. It was a tiring year with many worries and in the end i only could see blackness, not realizing how blessed i am with my two kids, my darling hubbie and beautiful home while i am a born optimistic. So i cannot show you new paintings or drawings because i even couldn't draw or paint. This new year, 2012,  lies ahead of me like a new canvas and i wanna paint it with rich colourful images, not worrying about the shades and the blacks. In fact black holds all colours and shadows belong to sunshine.

I wish you all a beautiful year and use your new canvas well.

I can show you a new beginning of a drawing and a new beginning of a painting, started awhile ago, but soon to be completed. Sharpen your pencils, clean your brushes, 2012 has begun, time for new horizons, new ideas, new dreams.

 

A fragment of a new painting  *  Three godesses settling your life

Just a glimpse of something new.

We live in a beautiful world

Because of the heart-rending week and still not feeling well, I have to clear the dark clouds in my head and to get rid of the stones in my stomach. I feel i have to turn the darkness into something good. So i have made the following painting and it's the beginning of a new series: We live in a beautiful world; the pain of growing-up.  To make clear; this isn't the boy i was writing about......



HIDE

Hello there my loyal blogger friends. Hide is the title of this post because i've just finished a new painting 'Hide'. I am very pleased with it. Also because i have the feeling i'm getting the touch of painting more and more. The feeling i had lost a bit somewhere down the road. 

It also seemed i was hiding too from blogland and the www in general. Maybe i was a little bit, but our computer crashed several times and i couldn't come online or just for a few minutes and then the computer just stopped to start all over. Again and again. Very frustrating, lol.  I will visit you all soon!

Next to painting i also started a new drawing: All the lonely people. My camera doesn't work either so i made the photo's with my cellphone. I hope you can see thru the poor quality. :-s
I welcome all my new friends; hello there! I hope you enjoy my world.......

I HIDE YOU

Curious cat :-D

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE

i search for the moon

In the beginning of this year i told you about new paintings i was working on. Here she is, a new goddess from the FERTILITY series. It was a bit of a struggle in the end, but i am so happy that i made her complete today.
Just like Caio i complain about the colours, because for real the blue is very bright, her hair and body has lots of colors, more than you can see on the screen. And i welcome all my new blogfriends......

Fertility * I don't know what you see

Life turns me, i don't know what you see

Close up

The beginning of a new painting

For a long time now i had the idea to do something with fertility goddessess. My restlessness lately lead me to painting again. And i almost obsessively started to paint my fertility goddess with the strange grimas. The cycle of attract-distract begins. First i fell in love with her, then i didn't like her too much and now when i finished her today i think she's wonderful. But only in time i grow fond of my art and then i can let go.....
After finishing Life turns me... i had the urge to paint another one as well. So the last painting is the set up for a new fertility goddess as well. It's all about the circle of life: birth, blood, death and the beginning of new life.










The sources of my inspiration.....

L'Héautontimorouménos * The self-tormentor

In my early twenties, as i started to read the flowers of evil (Les fleurs du mal) of Charles Baudelaire, i became a big fan of him. I was (and am) attracted by the dark beauty of his words which bring emotions as fear, pain, lust, hope, melancholy, loneliness and despair. His words comfort me; i am not the only one struggling with these dark, lonely emotions. His words inspire me also and they linger in my heart and work.

My most favourite poem is L'Héautontimorouménos. Especially because of the last words:

Je suis de mon coeur le vampire,
— Un de ces grands abandonnés
Au rire éternel condamnés
Et qui ne peuvent plus sourire!

I'm the vampire of my own heart
— One of those utter derelicts
Condemned to eternal laughter,
But who can no longer smile!

How beautiful is that? In all its darkness and sadness.
You can find the poem (and some translations in english) here.

Inspired by this intense poem i painted in 1988 a large painting referring to The self-tormentor.

The photographs are not good because of the flashlight. And in real the colors are more rich and vivid and intense. But i want to show them anyway. Soon i'll try to make better pics.

Acrylics on canvas * Height 150 cm * Width 200 cm

L'Héautontimorouménos

The ignorant

The addict

The cry

Lust

And for now i'm back to my garden again because of the heat indoors. I don't like heat. I'll pay you all a visit soon, when it's cooler in tha house.

I hope your dreams are full of hope. Keep smiling.

Work in progress

It was such lovely weather, so i could paint in the garden.

How a city grows upon my canvas..........

Detail; earthmother needs some air.

~Dream about green horizons and fresh air~

Work in progress

I'm working on a new painting and it goes well. It's a fertility godess and this is the start up. I have to work on it ofcourse, the seizes are not totally correct, i have to change her legs, but i wanna try to let the orange, red lines around her head as it is, not too much details but the rough idea. Anyway i'm happy how it turns out till now and i'm curious how she'll end.



Dream about birthday cakes, 'cause tomorrow i am a birthdaygirl. :-D

A taste of life

I hope you all had a wonderfull Easter, like i did. The second Easter day was great; i painted all day long!
I finally finished my Taste of life painting, based upon a drawing of mine that's very dear to me. (A little girl....) I started the painting but it was a big struggle, i couldn't finish it. It wasn't good enough for what i wanted to tell. So it stood there in my room, whispering for attention. But i resisted all those whispers and let it be.

Yesterday i started a new painting. The first steps, the base and i am pleased. Curious what will become of it. But then i had to stop, it was enough for that moment. I felt a bit frustrated for being stuck.

My eyes dwell through the room and there she was, the little girl so old. Silent. I looked at her, afraid to approach her. But she was calm and my restlessness resolved in the air. I took a deep breath and started to paint. And paint. Until this girl could tell all she wants to tell. That makes me so happy. Now she has finished her story and i fell in love with her. I am so content on how she grew. I hope you also like my little girl, so old in her shoes. I haven't a good camera so i have posted the painting twice. One inside the house and one outside in the sun but with shadows (i like the shadows btw) I hope you get a bit an idea of the colors etc. The tree is black with red scratches, the earth is also with lots of scratches so you can see many layers. It's a pity this isn't so clear on the picture. But here is my new painting

A taste of life.

The beginning of

A rough beginning of a painting i started awhile ago. I wanna paint this on a large canvas........

Struggle (what's new? ;-))

Today i was very, very restless. And frustrated. My muse was roaring inside of me, she wants to be free. I have kept her too long in her cage, waiting. I tried different keys to open the cage, but i couldn't manage. Some keys were lost, others rusted or broken. In the beginning my muse was quiet, she understood and was hoping for better times. I played with her creating drawings and she was pleased with the pretty and sweet places where she could wander. If you take a good look you also can find the dark corners where she sometimes wanna hide and feel safe. But she still felt caged. And that made me sad, today i cried a view times, just like that, without a clear reason. My muse grabbed me by the hand, delegating the restlesness and tension. The tension grew and almost became unbearable. So i took a canvas and my brushes and started to paint. Very cautious in the beginning. But she was whispering, and the whispers became stronger, transformed in a clear voice: "Stop the crap, let go! Let go! Don't be a tart, i don't wanna be pretty and sweet. Not this time! I wanna be rough and alive." She was guiding me to happiness and i could let go, feeling more and more secure and i used bigger brushes to avoid unnessesary details. I couldn't stop painting and she broke loose, free at last. And i was in love again with her, feeling so happy. And now she's looking at me from the canvas, so strong, but i begin to doubt again. I think every painter know this progress. I still am in love but i see her flaws. At this point i have to take some distance and let her grow. But i'll complete her world this week, because i cannot walk away from her. Not any longer. It will be a struggle, but it's worth every tear and drop of blood.

The painting is not yet finished and the quality of the photograph lousy, the colours are deeper and more intense for real, but i couldn't wait to share this process with you. In a few days, when finished i will upload a good photograph.

TASTE

Seele brennt! ~*~ My soul is burning!

I love the music from Einstürzende neubauten. Sehr! The lyrics are so dark, raw, mysterious. I think Blixa Bargeld is a genius with words and performance. I had the luck to see them perform in their early years and it was mindblowing. So the painting is all about Blixa Bargeld.

Seele brennt!

Ich bin die umstürzlerische Liebe
der Gegensex
Jeder Tag kostet mich Wunden
dabei bin ich schon jetzt
zerschunden und völlig blutverschmiert

Du fängst im Taxi an zu heulen
bloss weil ich sage
dass ich bei dem Konsum
in zwei Jahren tot bin
Alle Idole müssen sterben (Lachen)

meine Seele brennt
Ich versteck mich, sitz in meinem Loch
und warte auf die Träume, die mich retten (Kommen nicht)
Liebe ist ein Scheiterhaufenauf dem ich langsam aber sicher
von innen her zum Rand verbrenne

Ich hab gekostet
bin zu weit gegangen
werd den Geschmack nicht los
Vielleicht ist nur entzündet
vielleicht ist nur entzündet, was da brennt
An Stelle meiner Seele
an der Stelle meiner Seele
meine Seele brennt!

Einstürzende neubauten

De granaatappel * The pomegranate

At the moment i am very restless and all i want to do is paint, paint paint! My most favourite time to paint isat night, 'cause then all is quiet, no disturbances. Just me, my painting and some music. But to paint at night isn't possible when you have children ánd work. So i have to find my way during the day. Also i am struggling to find myself again in my paintings. Insecurity blocks sometimes my creative energy. This insecurity i never feel about my drawings. I have to find my goals again, to find my way to express myself with paint and being happy with it. Sometimes i still find myself too neat, as i pointed out before. But i will get there where i wanna be. In time....

This painting i started to paint some years ago, but never had the time and the courage to finish it. But now i've started painting again and can't be stopped so to speak ;-), i finally hope to finish this painting in some days. Sorry for the bad reproduction, i'll ask a good friend of mine to make better pictures in the future. But i wanted to upload this already haha.
It's a large painting; heigth 110 cm and width 130 cm. There's much too see on this painting. I call it the pomegranate. Because of the many symbolic meanings it contains. In a nutshell: The Christian symbolic of the pomegranate is resurrection. In ancient times it stands for fertility. And in the old Greek myths it's all about Persephone and the underworld. I like this one the most by the way. But i mixed all those symbolic meanings together to create my own mythological language. It speaks about good or bad, guilt and innocence, love, hope, fears, blood. All my favourite topics. If you take a good look at my painting you will find many references.

So here are some details of the painting:
Click on the images for a larger view.

Struggle

I never stopped drawing when my kids were little, but i couldn't paint for a long time. Just because i was too busy and to paint needs time and concentration. I used to paint very large paintings, but some time ago when i started to paint again i began with small seizes. One step at a time. I showed you the beginning of a painting after one of my favourite drawings, but i can't finish it for some reason. Too scared to destroy it? 'Cause i know that i can go on too long on a painting, to make it more beautiful. But then i hate it 'cause i don't want it to be too beautiful. I don't wanna make neat images, i want it to be more than that. I want to draw the viewer into my world and to let him/her feel it. Not the nice things, but the intensity. The struggles in life. The passion and dreams too. I don't like too neat.

So this is also the struggles of a painter, i think every artist knows what i'm talking about. And when i got too much frustrated i sometimes think that i am not a painter at all, that i am a drawer. Nothing wrong with it anyway. But today i finished a painting and i am satisfied with it! I am so happy! I painted a landscape some time ago and i want it to be in a series of emotional landscapes. So i want to paint a figure in the landscape that express an emotion. But i didn't know exactly how or what. So i let it rest. Today i got inspired and started painting all afternoon. And finished The storm.



Landscape before...


The Storm

Holidays and the beginning of a painting

Tomorrow i'm leaving to France for my holidays. I'm looking forward to make beachwalks, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, wandering thru old villages, eating croissants, ansjofish and french cheese, drinking red wine while watching the sinking sun and to draw, draw and even more draw 'cause now i have enough time. :-)
I will be away for two weeks or so. Take care you all and enjoy what you're doing....

I leave you with an unfinished painting i started. I paint this after one of my favourite drawings: a little girl, so old in her shoes. I hope to finish it soon enough when i'm home again.

See you.....

Les fleurs du mal

First design of this painting. Acrylics on canvas. The black is painted with black laquer. It's a pity you can't see it at the picture. How it shines. So the blak is shining and the flowers are dull. With reason. Tell me what you think....
Size: 18 x 24 cm

Momo Luna

Detail