User Portlet
In 1947 I was born in Essen, Germany. Quite shortly after having acquired a degree in academic studies of education and sports, I quit my job as a teacher and choose a profession in printing, which was much closer to my abilities. I became a master printer, did 4 years of after hours studies in economics at Open University Hagen, a good basis for my professional career.
As an artist I am working since 1988 and have created some 150 paintings, 7 posters, clips, objects, fotos. As a printer I always have been connected to colour, but just in a reproductive way, until I discovered the artistic potential of my professional material and of my creativity.
In the eighties,when I had to mix ink of a certain hue, I placed a used printing plate upside down on the table, weighed the amount of ink prescribed by the recipe, put it onto the plate, mixed it with a spatula to finally heave it into the inkfountain of the maschine. Looking back at the clean scraped plate I noticed, that beside the to and fro tracks of the spatula spots of untainted colour had reappeared from under the mixed ink.
I was fascinated to work with colours that printers rarely use: purple, violet, blue, green, orange, red; cyan, magenta, yellow being the printers every day process colours. Above all was the colours stunning intensity resulting from the pure industrially synthesised pigments on half mat aluminium.
I took some of these mixing plates home, regarding them as colourful random paintings. Then I began to direct the spatula, the first step to Painting had been done. Years later I cut the plates into postcard-sized clips, chosing only dramatic spots.
A second source for my work was waste material of the printing plant I was working in.
First of all the defective printing plates, waste ink, stripes of aluminium, leftover from punching, dust on a palette board, package cardboard, a printing plate damaged in a maschine crush. Things you normally pass by, you have to get rid off, suddenly switch meaning inside my brain. The subject matter of my paintings are, naturally, drawn from my life, from books Ive read, the system of colours, the contradiction between contingency and determination.