VERONIKA OBERLOJER
Influenced by painters who explored the dimensions of light and the laws of perception, the visual experience of light, space, and colour is a central theme in my artistic work.
For me, realistic painting from nature or models goes hand in hand with abstract experiments to explore the interrelationship between colours and between colour and form. While I use observations of my surroundings as a basis for figurative motifs in order to paint light and shadow as colour, my abstract works are freely and spontaneously invented compositions. Colours are combined in such a way that they develop their own dynamic in the viewer's perception. One could say that ‘light is released when viewed’ rather than ‘translated’ into colour, as in the representational works. Working in parallel is a method that allows me to explore vision itself by integrating observations of light and colour in nature into the abstract painting process and, in turn, transferring the emotional impact of form and colour into the figurative.
Among the many artists who have inspired me over the years, I would particularly like to mention the British painter Bridget Riley. In her 2007 essay ‘Seurat as Mentor’, she wrote about Georges Seurat's influence on her development as a painter:
“He wanted to represent the perception of colour in nature through isolating and reassembling its constituents, whereas I wanted to release and organise colour’s perceptual activity down there on the canvas.”
Seurat challenged conventional viewing habits by no longer capturing an object in its characteristic form, outline and physicality, but instead splitting the light in which an object or landscape appears into the unbroken colours of the solar spectrum and placing them on the canvas as dots. Riley took the reverse approach, breaking down the sensation of a visual or emotional experience into its constituent parts in order to reassemble it on the picture plane, thus presenting our eyes with a new challenge.
In my artistic work, drawing is the connecting link between the abstract and the figurative. The abstraction process of drawing – the “translation” of form and space, of light and shadow into lines and masses – forms an interface where the perception of nature overlaps and merges with studies of perception. In both representational and abstract art, breaking down a composition into colour fields, lines and surfaces is a method that allows colour to develop its own unique effect. When painting from nature, colour is directly related to the lighting conditions, whereas in abstract compositions, colour and form are related to each other.
Exploring the perception of contrast, rhythm and colour temperatures provides me with a language that needs no words to express feelings on paper and canvas.