etudes

étude versus study

If one looks up the English-language equivalent of the French term études in conventional dictionaries, the result is generally “study”. Translated into other languages, it goes in the same direction.
Only when you translate it from a music-theoretical point of view do you come up with “études”.

For me, études also exist in painting and mean something fundamentally different from “studies”. When I do studies, I do them with a relatively clear idea of what the finished painting should look like: what the composition should be, what colors, what technique…

With my études, however, it is the same as with the études of some music composers. An official translation of ètude in classical music would be:

1: a piece of music for the practice of a point of technique.

2: a composition built on a technical motive but played for its artistic value.

It is like things that études are not about perfection in the sense of a work that is composed down to the last detail. Instead, other aspects flow into my études. I would like to present a few today.

IS versus IS NOT

As already mentioned before, this aspect IS::IS-NOT plays a role in many of my pictures. The term relating “opposites” (in the Chinese sense in painting) is particularly close to my heart in many ways. e.g. The viewer is pushed into a certain direction of seeing and at the same time this perspective is called into question.

I’ll try to illustrate this with the first picture. This sheet can be seen as a simple, contemplative study of a landscape. At the moment when I give the picture this title: “Be careful little girl when the calm takes shape” I trigger images in the viewer that overlay the original one. Suddenly the soulful girl on the right becomes visible and the idyll is raised to another level as a poetic touch comes into play.

1 Be careful little girl when the calm takes shape

The triggers for these études are mostly, as in this case, of a personal nature. But also observations in nature, and often reflections on earlier work with an attempt to improve weak points in it.

2 seascape

I had prepared a text for the next two works, but I think that would only create confusion. I also think the pictures speak for themselves.

3 spring-autumn

This game of opposites comes into play differently in the final sheet “spring-autumn”.

As always with these works, and most of all my words, nothing should be taken too seriously. Moreover, they are only studies.

More such works: PORTFOLIO | heralds of spring