As long as I can remember, I have been doing art. When I was growing up in post-war Germany, shortage of materials to produce anything creative limited my choice of medium. So my earliest drawings were made with pieces of charcoal on the backside of old wall paper torn out of buildings about to be repaired or rebuilt.

 

Growing up on my grandfather's small farm near Heidelberg during and after the war left me with indelible memories. While we always had enough to eat, I saw people begging for food at our door. My grandfather gave them a place at the table. By the time I started studying art, my thoughts and feelings about life and art were permanently affected by these early experiences and were shaped by a moral sense rooted in compassion and guided by a sense of justice.

 

In the mid-sixties when the air was thick with smoke from fiery talk about art and its role in Germany, like many I struggled for an answer. What should be a positive role for an artist in Germany after the catastrophe? How could art help clear up the rubble in our hearts and minds? Was it possible that art could help weave a social fabric based on justice? Because a positive view of aesthetics is so life affirming, for me engaging in the creative process was a political act. My belief in this possibility remains alive to this day.

 

As I worked more and more with colour, its essence intrigued me. My sense of colour, I think, is influenced by music. Like music, colour has a complex effect on our perception. It has its particular syntax and employs a vast spectrum to express joy passionately. I am a visual person, but I experience music when I work with colour to communicate what I see and feel – in a non-verbal way, like movements in a dance. Bach and Beethoven are with me when I work with colour. Focus on colour is a way to see the world with different eyes - to 'see' freely with colour, unencumbered by symbols of various ideologies.

 

Maybe human beings' oldest positive colour experience is the spectacle of sunrise and sunset. This daily light show leaves an enduring stamp on our perception of colour and our ability to sense and imagine its effect. This global phenomenon is a source of shared wonder and joy. 

 

Colour and a sense of wonder in nature helps me develop a positive view of aesthetics.