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AwenaArt
♀️
[22075107]
[2012-05-15 19:24:41 +0000 UTC]
(United States)
# Statistics
Favourites: 16; Deviations: 9; Watchers: 7
Watching: 5; Pageviews: 3450; Comments Made: 34; Friends: 5
# Interests
Favorite visual artist: Sisley, MonetFavorite movies: The Color Purple,The Bridges of Madison County
Favorite TV shows: Queer as Folk, Twin Peeks
Favorite bands / musical artists: Otis Redding, Van Morrison
Favorite books: Siddhartha, The Gift, Stein und Flöte
Favorite writers: Herman Hesse, Michael Ende
Favorite games: Malefiz
Favorite gaming platform: ?
Tools of the Trade: Acrylic and Oil Paint,
Other Interests: Family and Nature
# About me
I’m an Afro-German woman that hails from a family of escape artists. My father fled the bloody Zanzibar Revolution to live in Erfurt, East Germany where he met my mother. When I was born, my family abandoned their lives behind the Iron Curtain to resettle in Frankfurt, West Germany. And later, following in my parents’ fugitive footsteps, I escaped my severe depression through my pursuit of art.In my teens, I immersed myself in painting, pottery, bookmaking, sewing, etching, photography and papermaking. As a young adult living in Germany, I worked closely with the color and wall-surface expert Martina Löw and learn the art of screen-printing. I also interned in the art departments of an advertising agency and apprenticed with a goldsmith.
I have always been drawn to books, movies and music that mad me want to laugh or cry or dance. Their lingering impressions remind me of who I am and from where I’ve come. I create art for a similar purpose—to tell stories that make powerful emotional connections with the viewer.
While overcoming depression as a teen and young adult, I learned to tune in to my turbulent emotions and channel their messages into my art. Encountering the deepest lows and the highest highs has been a powerful gift in helping me authentically capture the spectrum of human emotions in my work. I use color and light to capture a specific mood, and paint with brushes, palette-knifes, and my hands and fingers to form my own unique aesthetic. The backgrounds of my acrylic and oil paintings are often inspired by patterns and textures that I find in nature. As you take a closer look you’ll discover a million little details that are unique to each piece.
Ten years ago, I began to explore the profound effects that images in the media—from advertisements to celebrity photos in tabloid magazines—have on our emotions. But rather than choose familiar subjects, I cast unknown figures in my paintings. Their stark anonymity served as a catalyst for translating the raw feelings they evoked in me onto the canvas. More recently, I have been experimenting with painting people I know. This gives me more freedom with the composition and makes their emotional undercurrent more personal. For the viewer, each multi-layered, large-scale image encourages—and even demands—pure reactions, free from expectations and prescribed sentimentality.
These day I consider myself very lucky to be an artist and an international mom to my to young bilingual sons. Sending them to Play Mountain Place a progressive alternative humanistic school with a main focus on emotional intelligence and conflict resolution, goes hand in hand with the way the way I feel about my art.
# Comments
Comments: 4
Thank you for joining
We are very happy to have you!
Please submit all of your wonderful QaF artwork if you have any!
If you've never seen the show, we are have a blog with links to sites to watch it, but take a look at our other blogs too.. There is something for everyone.
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You have some truly beautiful works in your gallery. I've read about Play Mountain Place before. I love their teaching philosophy, kind of similar to Waldorf schools but even more free.
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