2014-2021
Oil paintings 2014-2015
Oil paintings made in my studio by Fellini Gallery, Kreuzberg, that I had the first 13 month, I lived in Berlin.
Klick on an image to see large pictures.
(Informations like titel and size is coming soon).
Oil paintings 2016-2018
Oil paintings made in my studio in KAMO-studios, Neukölln, and after that in my studio in the artist house: Green House, Tempelhof.
Drawings 2016
In 2016 I made this 10 drawings for an x-mas exebition at GalArtery, Copenhagen.
Oil paintings 2018-2019
For finasiel resons I moved in 2018 all my art equipments home to my 2-room apartment in Neukölln and turned the one room into a studio. Here I kept on doing oil paintings.
Acrylic and mixed media paintings 2019-2021
Because of helth reasons and the fact, that I lived and sleept in the same flat, where I also had my painting studio, in the spring of 2019 I decided to work with other materials then oil paint. I did a lot of experiments. Quite many of the here below shown paintings did not survive for a long time. I had a dream to start doing sculptures, but my flat was too small for that.
Drawings 2019-2021
Oil paintings 2021
After struggeling a lot trying to get used to work with acrylic, in the beginning of 2021 I totally gave up and whent back to the oil paint. Thougt it was still a struggle for me to paint. I did not enjoy it anymore, did not feel any inspiration and had the feeling, that I had nothing to give.
May 2021. ESSAY ABOUT WHY I STOPPED BEEING AN ARTIST
As a kid, I was always drawing. People around me said, that of course I should be an artist, when I grew up. No thanks, I thought. I had heard of Van Gogh, who went mad and cut off his ear, and other horror stories. Artists are unhappy, was my belief, so I certainly would not be an artist. And unhappy.
But as I got older, I realize, that it is not something you choose. I think, that either you are an artist (and possibly unhappy), but you try to force yourself to be something else and thereby only become even more unhappy, because you do not give room to be who you are deep inside, or you accept that you are an artist (and possibly unhappy), live it out and possibly use the unhappiness as a creative force, whereby it all comes to make sense. And because you use art as a valve to get rid of some of the pain, the feeling of misfortune may be a little less.
That does not mean, that I think, that one must be unhappy to be an artist, or that the solution for all unhappy people is to become an artist. I just think, it is about daring to be, who you really are. For many years, I have identified myself as an artist because that is, what I am, because I simply must paint, and because I can do nothing else.
The text above I wrote for about eight to ten years ago. Today (May 2021) I write like this about my artist identity:
Fifteen years ago, I started painting oil paintings and have since that linked my identity to being an artist. For the last many years, however, I have had increasing difficulty painting. I have tried other materials, techniques, and themes, but have rarely been satisfied with either the process or the finished result and have painted most of it over again. With longing I have sought to get into the beloved flow, where time and place and the question of meaning disappear, and the painting almost paints itself, as it happened to me before, but it just does not happen anymore. I have wondered to myself: Why can I no longer paint as before? But I have not been able to answer. Not until now!
One Sunday in April 2021, I was contacted via Messenger by a peripheral FB friend who had been looking at my old website, which had not been updated for years. She inquired into some of my paintings of older date and wanted to know how to understand them.
“For me, it is more interesting,” I replied, “to hear what emotions and thoughts my paintings arouse in the viewer, than to explain what thoughts and feelings are behind the creation of the paintings.” As soon as I had written it, it struck me, that I was actually not able to explain my old paintings at all. It set a lot of thoughts in motion in me.
From 2007 to 2014 (where I, after about 25 years on Bornholm, moved to Berlin) I did cognitive therapy, and three years ago, in 2018, I started here in Berlin in psychotherapy, which I still do with great benefit. In my therapy the day after my little Messenger correspondence, I opened up to my newly awakened thoughts about my relationship to my own art and my identity as an artist.
“I have previously told a lot about my frustrations about not being able to paint anymore,” I said. “Now I think I know what it’s all about. When I threw myself over the oil paints and the half-king-sized canvases a little over 15 years ago, I was in a deep life crisis. I suffered so terribly from a lot of oppressed, unmanageable grief, anxiety, and anger that I myself did not understand the essence of and therefore was unable to put into words. Through the painting, I got drained of my bad emotions, and the images, which were consistently very violent, came directly from the depths of my subconscious. At that time, I not only felt great satisfaction by painting. I painted simply because, I had to. Painting was for me like a valve, where I could get rid of a little of the overpressure of everything that reigned in my subconscious.”
“It is as if,” I continued, “that painting no longer has the same function for me as before. Through my therapeutic work, I have come to know my grief, anxiety, and anger, and through understanding where the emotions come from and what they want from me, I have to some extent gotten rid of them. At any rate, they are now far more conscious and manageable. That means, my painting process has become extremely conscious. I think too much about, what I want to say with the individual painting. Creativity is simply thought to be dead; spontaneity disappears and magic dies. I simply can no longer paint!”
To my great surprise, my therapist told me, that she had experienced this before in her work as a therapist. She had even heard of artists who had simply refused to go into therapy, precisely because they feared losing the art thereby. “Now that you no longer feel like you can paint from the subconscious,” she said, “could you imagine starting to paint in a different way?”
“Not really,” I said. “In fact, that is exactly what I have been trying to do for the last couples of years. It just does not mean anything to me. For me, painting is not a craft, but associated with an inner urge to express myself, and that urge has now disappeared in step with my growing self-awareness. On the other hand, a bit of the same thing has happened in relation to my writing, but here i has the complete opposite effect. When I earlier wrote, it also came more or less from my subconscious, and often it became cluttered and incomprehensible and without a red thread. My writing has clearly been strengthened by the fact, that I have become more conscious, and now that I am far better able to put my feelings and thoughts into words, I have a strong desire to express myself through written language rather than pictorial language.”
When she asked me, if I felt sad about not being able to paint anymore, I replied: “Actually not. Almost the opposite. I would even say that it is a HUGE RELIEF for me, that I no longer HAVE to paint! For a long time, I have dreamed about packing all my paintings stuff in the basement and free myself from the yoke, that I have always perceived myself as forced to be a visual artist. I think it is time for that now. And I actually feel really good about it!”
Mimi Harteg 