ONLY LIGHT

Helene B. Grossmann

 I would like to tell you about my working methods and aims.
My subjects are light and color space.
My aim is to create pictures full of pulsating life in detail and peace as a whole.
I do not intend viewers to be rigidly pointed in a certain direction and told what to see, but rather to be able to open themselves in a free spirit to the natural processes of their own ways of viewing.
Thus my work has to do with the essence of painting, of light, and of color.
Ever since I was a student, I have tried to materialize light in my painting.I have spent a lot of time on the refraction of colors and thus with changeability in the picture.
At first glance, one usually sees less, and the colorfulness of the pictures does not reveal itself until later.
This changeability is also subject to the time of day and to light conditions.
One always discovers something else when the mood changes.
It is a balancing act between abstraction and figuration. For everything figurative, there is a model. For abstraction, there is no model. It is reality itself.
I try to express elementary human feelings by seeking to activate the space between the viewer and the picture. Light helps viewers to experience a depth of space beyond real spatiality.
The concept of most of the pictures comes about in such a complex way that even I can hardly put it into words.
The basis of every picture is my sketchbook. You can see part of it under ‘Grafik???’ (Graphics). I call this sketchbook ‘Calendar days’.
It contains very abstract groundwork and records of experiences.
I started this kind of sketchbook in 1993.
The procedure consists of using colored patches and broad brushstrokes to search for the characteristic arrangement in the picture, and to leave the rest to a reworking in a larger format.
My technique requires a slow application of the colors, a spreading of one layer over another, in order to be able to control the colors on the canvas.
Matisse called it ‘navigation’.
This tentative searching attracts me. This classical way of painting has many dangers and difficulties, but it always confronts me with unknown events and surprising turns.
In the uncertain field of tension, I try to find the middle of the color cosmos.
This process of finding the basic pictorial nerve has something cleansing about it.
During this search, one discards fashions and meaningless spleens.
My way is to use the means of painting to depict something, to give the motif a depth, a before and after; to create a new insight and outlook, and to generate empowering silence.