© Vova
My life has always been characterized by big moves and radical changes, by great challenges but also by great gifts. Actually, I would say that my true birth took place in Egypt in 1998, at the age of 40. I lived there with my daughter for almost a decade and worked as a teacher at the German School in Cairo.
The vibrations I felt in the desert, the energies emanating from the ancient Egyptian monuments and the warmth and friendliness of the people were highly supportive in unfolding my emotional, communicative and creative potentials.
Returning back to Austria, my geographical homeland in the upper Mur valley, in 2003 also meant returning to and dealing with my past life, a challenge that had to be met before moving on; the setting was provided by my job at “Gymnasium Tamsweg”.
2018 witnessed my next big change, once again a move from the country to the city, this time to Vienna. Now I can devote myself entirely to my artistic work, and looking for resonances within as well as without will keep me travelling both geographically and mentally.
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use a work of art to see your soul.
G.B.Shaw (1856-1950)
This quotation illustrates quite adequately the motivation behind my art work, which is the deep need to make something visible and perceptible – something that I can discover within myself, in a kind of inner universe, which I am able to log onto. With the help of different means and techniques I then turn my findings into reality – not only for the viewer but also for myself, my goal always being to give an authentic and truthful account of my inner journeys.
In the course of my artistic career, different ways of giving my ideas a form have developed, always with an eye for aesthetics and harmony.
At the moment I am working through the media of photography, painting and writing. My camera serves as a means of locating patterns and structures in the outside world – my focus being on sand, tree or stone structures but also on architectural features. Wax crayons are the tools I use to give birth to inner landscapes in the form of intuitive Mandalas and other abstract paintings. As a third form of expressing fundamental issues and experiences, poems and various other kinds of writing have evolved.
Art reveals. Art removes. Art unveils.
Art reveals new views on our so-called reality. Art removes the boundaries of perception inviting us to states of enhanced awareness. Thus art unveils new possibilities to unsettle rigid and restrictive systems and to direct our attention back to essential areas of life so that it keeps flowing, because life is joyful flowing motion, life is like a dance, and art is a means of reaching this level of vibration.
My role as an artist in contemporary society is to stir things up in a subtle way, encouraging people to look beneath the surface, to pierce through the reflections, thus, in G.B.Shaw’s terms, to look into the mirror of art in order to regain access to their proper vitality.
Experiencing genuine art allows for self-encounters. That is why I understand art as an invitation to the viewers to let themselves be moved, to enter into resonance, to join the dance in order to ultimately not remain on the surface (of the glass mirror).