Interview
Skadi Engeln
Skadi Engeln has been concerned with landscape since her intense experience of nature while walking the St. James Way in Spain in 2001. By now this traditional genre of painting has become a focal motive of her art. However, she does not depict landscapes realistically, but she creates intense colour effects as a result of her experience.
Engeln has studied at the FH Otterberg, as well as sculpture with Robert van de Laar, and painting with Michael Kohr and Hermanus Westendorp. She lives and works in Berlin and France. She has shown her works in numerous solo and group exhibitions, among others in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Hamburg, Munich, Paris, Graz, New York and Molde. Her works are also included in international collections.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“My parents were physicists and mathematicians. This led to my siblings and I growing up with questions about what the world and ourselves are composed of, and which forces hold everything together or drive it apart. My mother came from a strong catholic family, so science was a way for her to get answers on the question of what could be the energy or whatever humanity calls God. I enjoyed mathematics as an abstraction of the world, in which I could meditate on.
Eventually I found myself drawn to the arts: an abstraction of aspects in the world that shine through what is behind and above, underneath and in front. I definitely viewed art in a more free and subjective way. So I was interested in art as a vehicle to understand the world, by formulating my own awareness.
But I was also interested in psychology, to understand how we humans find ourselves in the world. I discovered and studied first art therapies, from which I learned much about colors, forms and materials, and how they interact and communicate. Currently I still study and work in both fields. At first I concentrated on sculpture, but then found that painting makes it easier for me to experiment with the idea of dissolving and composing.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“As a formal theme in painting, I enjoy landscape as a representation of the world: Landscape dissolves into light, water, weather and people. Thanks to its gravity, it decomposes time and time again. In its transitions, landscape reveals its essence, its transcendence and its beauty. Like landscape, painting knows how to dissolve what is specific, solid, visible and familiar to us. Thus it traces the invisible without ever recognising it completely.
Landscape reflects underlying realities/truths, makes them show through, encrypts them, discloses them only as approximations. Landscape is already a filter of what lies underneath, and in addition, human view is influenced, shaped, blocked and distorted. I do not attempt to decode what is underneath or above. That secret should be kept. Beauty should be preserved, and what is encrypted - the mysterious - might well be part of that beauty.”
“In my current series ‘Störbilder’ (disturbed pictures), or ‘Durchwebte Landschaften’ (interwoven landscapes), landscapes appear as if hidden by a curtain, a veil or lines. They allude to the contemporary perception of the world through modern media, and how flawed this perception is. I started to ‘disturb’ my paintings in the spring of 2011. The accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant led to my view of the world being ‘broken’. The beauty of the landscapes that inspire my paintings – the Berry in France, the Uckermark in eastern Germany, the sea – has not suffered. But man has inscribed them with a virulent conflict.”
What would you say inspires you most?
“As an artist I am inspired by the world around us - and what the world is made of. So I find much of my inspiration by observing the world from my point of view, which I can extend by travelling, observing landscapes, by talking with people who surround me, by the news, and by participating in the experiences of my patients, who come from different cultural backgrounds.”
“The serial separation of one motive onto several canvases alludes to photo sequences that document a journey. It is about the human, observing a view, how it is processed, and it is about the interdependence between landscape and observer. Hence, it is also about the influence of the observer, of humans on landscapes.”
How would you describe your work?
“I paint and do printmaking (woodcut and silk print). Since 2001, I have been especially interested in abstract landscape painting. In my current work, landscapes appear as if hidden by a curtain or a veil, disturbed, interwoven with lines or stripes. They create a distance between landscape and observer. They could be landscapes as seen from a train, with mirror images in the windows – scratched, and with masts and transmitters rhythmically interrupting the view. They could be like curtains that separate and protect from the world, or like technical defects of electronic screens that present landscape scenes. They could be music, thoughts, conversations that a walker is occupied with and become interwoven in his perception and memory of the landscape he/she is walking through.”
What is your creative process like?
“I begin with inspiration from what I have lived, seen and heard. So I begin to bring some color, forms, and scenes on the canvas, paper, or wood. Most times I observe what is happening there and try to understand and work out what the painting itself answers, and where it wants to go. This is the most difficult and conflicting part of my work - to find out the ‘truth’ of each painting. It can go through many episodes of doubts, destruction, finding new answers etc., in the very abstract way of the painting itself.”
Which artists influence you most?
“I really like Marc Rothko’s work - the multiple layers of his colours develop colour rooms that seem to shine within themselves. They seem to tell about a behind, a forward, an underneath and an above and the exchanges between these elements.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“I see myself receiving many impressions in my world, and trying to work them out and communicate them through my art. To me it feels like an abstract exercise of finding clarity, or at least to try. I think artists investigate an approximation in a kind of abstract truth, that contributes to human truth finding, and therein finding solutions. I think that generally, artists do this by experimenting on new views. But there is always a seduction in following the self developed, perhaps even on the art market - working concepts that lead to remaining in one point that gets nowhere with time. This trap is dangerous for me too. At the same time, we need the public, as art is communicating and interacting with the world.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“I think my exhibition in Berlin Zionkirche 2016 was a noteworthy exhibition for my work. I had the opportunity to show large paintings of my landscapes and skies, in a room of the church I was exhibiting in. In the western world, the church, represented through the last 2000 years, is a place for living spirituality, even if often disturbed by political, economic and personal interests. In my trials to observe and express the world through my work, its past and future, as through shining layers, I find the driving force of my research perhaps the same reason that people have a spiritual need for knowledge.” See more here and here.
