Thea Herzig
Leissigen, Bern
Thea Herzig,1969, was born in Germany, but has lived and worked in Switzerland for 30 years. She is a pastel artist who has dedicated herself to "food art".
MessageMy artistic journey and my life began in 1969 on Christmas morning in Munich (Germany). My maternal family has produced several artists. Both my grandmother and my mother were both artistically inclined. The grandmother would have liked to become a dancer, but her father forbade her to do so. My mother had a great talent for painting. Unlike her brother, who studied art, she was not able to realize herself in this direction.
However, my sister and I were supported by my mother to the best of our abilities. As soon as we could hold pencils in our hands, we painted paper after paper. My mother kept each of these small works of art carefully and noted our explanations and interpretations on the backs. This great appreciation of my art still resonates within me today.
Until the age of 20 I was convinced that I could do "something" with art in my life. But as life goes, it turned out differently than expected. With the early death of my mother and the move to Switzerland, the focus suddenly shifted to earning money, so at the age of 20 I decided to work as a nurse.
For many years I always had painting in mind but did not dare to invest time because I was worried that I would not be good enough without formal training.
In my early thirties, with a small child at home, I felt that I had to give my creativity an outlet so that I would not choke on it.
I started painting with acrylic and continued my education in various courses and techniques at the "Schule für Gestaltung" (Bern). See below
In 2011 I discovered the Hamburg artist Astrid Volquardsen and pastel chalks. In 3 pastel courses, which I attended with her, I learned the basics about pastels. Since then I have been addicted to pigments and dive deeper and deeper into the fascinating world of pure colours.
Since 2016 I have been taking part in exhibitions and selling my works to collectors in Switzerland and Germany.
Statement
Food as a guiding theme
Food is essential. It affects every human being. What comes on a person's table defines who he is and how he lived. If you know a person's food plan, you can most likely tell what their health status is, their financial situation, and where their hometown is. A person's food plan says more about them than a passport.
Food is identity and it connects. It connects one with other people who come from the same imprinting landscape. People share a preference for certain foods, they celebrate festivals together with dishes that are familiar to everyone.
Food is political. In a world where 11% of people still go hungry and at the same time obesity has become a widespread disease in industrialized countries, food is not a neutral issue.
Food is climate-relevant. Approximately 30% of the global Co2 emissions are caused by the production and transport of our food. And so the very thing that ensures our survival, namely our food, also calls our survival into question at the same time.
And food excites me. I love to plant, harvest, preserve and cook. The artistic exploration of food is just a continuation of my everyday life. The reference photos of flowers are from my garden or nearby meadows. Many of the fruits, vegetables and flowers pictured are homegrown.
Tradition of still life
My paintings are in the tradition of still life, but not in the classical sense. Already the top view of the scene, instead of a side view, shifts the perspective. My still lifes are patterns whose arrangement I carefully plan and call "food patterns". The preliminary work with the actual fruits, the photographing and the editing on the computer take a lot of time. In the end, a picture is always created from many individual photographs that I combine.
The series of pictures has developed from experiments with classical still lifes. I have a special preference for the so-called "Darkfood-Photography", which shows food in very dark, atmospheric settings and which resemble the still lifes of the 17th and 18th century in their dark moods.
As in the vanitas or memento mori depictions of the 17th and 18th centuries, this darkness suggests the simultaneous presence of life/abundance as well as death/transience.
This statement may be somewhat irritating in view of my colorful fruits and blossoms bursting with freshness, and I am also content if the viewer simply sees a "beautiful" picture. But for the viewer who wants to go further and live up to his designation ("viewer"), he should feel invited by the title to go further in the contemplation.
Technique
All pictures are painted exclusively with pastels of various degrees of hardness. As a "tool" I use - in addition to the various stroke variations of the crayons - mainly my fingers. I work on pastel paper, which absorbs several layers of pigments well.
Since mixing with pastels is limited, I have a large palette of individual pastel sticks. From this palette, I create a separate, small palette for each individual object in the painting. Only when this process is complete do I begin to paint. Since I have divided the image design aspects and the color selection into individual steps, I can then concentrate exclusively on painting. For me, painting thus becomes an active meditation or, expressed psychologically, one could say that I can abandon myself to the experience of the "flow".
For courses and studiodays check www.pastellbild.ch/workshops
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