Featured Artist Annette Mewes-Thoms

Hamburg-based artist Annette Mewes-Thoms uses the line as her theme when creating energetic and flowing images. Discover how she works the line into her drawings, paintings and photography by visiting her website.

 

 

Because I grew up on the German coast of the North Sea, I played a lot in and with water. I love it, but I also know the dangers that can emanate from it. As a child I was often evacuated when storm floods came.

 

 

For many years I was looking for a way to paint the nature of water without illustrating it. Water is movement—flow and energy—with the line characteristics the same. Therefore, I reduced the forms and shapes I used in my paintings more and more until just the line was left.

 

 

After a few years the “Line” became my new theme.

 

 

At first I placed lines close together and watched their wavelike moving and wavy shifts. Soon afterwards I intersected the lines to create latticed-like structures.

 

 

Today, I am working with a new concept. I start each work with an intuitively placed line to which I align all of the following lines. I then build up several layers of lines. By layering lines I create a condensing as well as an overlap. This is what I call “visual sensations” because the layering creates a shimmering effect.

 

 

While working, I find myself in a state of both excitement and meditation.

 

 

I am excited, because I can’t plan and predict how my work will turn out. Experiencing the process of creation is like an adventure. I simply know that there is an infinite variety of possibilities. My natural curiosity drives me to explore this.

 

 

The working process is meditative too, because I concentrate on the line and perceive nothing more than my breathing and the sound of the marker. With every line I become calmer. With each line I show a piece of myself. In so doing I document my breathing, my constitution and every disturbance. This is why I can’t plan or even “produce” my works with the computer, as is suggested so often. Such works made by a machine would be soulless, they won’t show what happens inside of me. My works shall be alive!

 

 

Since 2016, my focus has been on drawing. I have drawn many small black and white works in varnish on canvas. The absence of color is intended to focus the mind on the line.

 

 

In 2017 I did my first large drawing.

 

 

Lines G2 has just been finished in August and is colored. I will present these two works at Art Stage Singapore in January 2018.

 

Artist Annette Mewes-Thoms invites you to follow her on Facebook.

 

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