CLAUDIA SÖDING
ART
My partly relief-like paintings are created from high-quality natural materials such as marble flour and fresco lime and composed in a time- and labour-intensive process. After a lengthy drying stage, those base materials are complemented by the application of numerous glazes of casein paint, egg tempera and/or ink. Atmospherically dense works balanced in combination of natural traces and creative abstraction are the result. As counterparts to these complex and multilayered works I compose subtle, soothing white paintings on canvas or wood. With their surfaces made of white fresco lime, a cool van Dyck brown is normally the pigment of my choice, resulting in a warming color composition.
To arouse emotions, to evoke associations of figure and landscape, to remain mysterious and unclear in the pictorial language as to stir the viewer’s own imagination - these are my primary motivations and desired outcomes of this creative process.
Besides the underlying message conveyed by paintings the fabrication and the haptic impression of my artworks is what I am most concerned with, varying from the portrayal of object-like illustrations to refined and abstract structures.
A careful handling of the materials and the visualization of structure has the same value for me as the thematic statement. Both are inseparably intertwined.
For over 20 years I have been developing my very own language and artistic form of expression in the art of painting, which is founded in informal art. In this, Dahmen, Schumacher and Tapes are great role models that continue to inspire me.
The world as living space and exhibition space: My abstract works - in the broadest sense - relate to the subjects "human being" and "nature", sometimes as scenic associations, as human figure, or simply as real matter in the form of stone powder and lime putty.
At the beginning there is intuition which provides space for a picture idea and doesn't release me. The process of the picture development creates its own language in my artistic analysis, the expressions of which are based in informal art. Damen, Schuhmacher and Tàpies have been great inspirations.
Claudia Söding, 2019