Interview
Stephanie Bing
Stephanie Bing studied painting in the master class of internationally renowned art professor Klaus Jürgen-Fischer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz and photography in the master class of Professor Dr. Vladimir Spacek from Prague. Born in 1967 in Mannheim, Germany, Bing graduated with distinction from high school in Offenburg. Subsequently, she studied fine arts, painting, photography, art history, German, and literature at Johannes Gutenberg University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz, again graduating with distinction. Following her education, she worked as an associate professor for the Bavarian Ministry of Culture in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and the Bavarian Chamber of Architects until 2002.
Bing focused on design, architecture, aesthetic perception, and digital media to promote visual literacy. In 2022, she won the international art prize "AWARD VIBES" in Frankfurt with her painting "Prophetia." She received the IIA 2022 Award in Photography and Digital Art as Finalist at Camelback Gallery, Arizona, USA, with her stunning photography.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I have been a working artist for more than 30 years. When I was young, I tied flowers together and arranged them in different vases to play with composition. When I was fourteen, I learned the principles of the Japanese art of floral arranging: Ikebana. That taught me a fresh and creative approach to movement, balance, and harmony with the line, color, and mass elements. I grew up in a house that was supportive of the arts. My mother was passionate about pottery, and I participated in many craft exhibitions with her. My dad is also a talented painter with hints of abstract expressionism in his youth and later realistic approaches in oil paintings. At 16, I started painting in watercolors: landscapes, still lifes, and seascapes. Subsequently, I studied fine arts, painting, photography, art history, German, and literature at the University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz, Germany. These professional qualifications gave me access to all creative techniques and provided me with a global art historical background. I started my painting career with solid references to abstract expressionism and reduced myself to almost monochrome, gestural signs in both formal language and color repertoire. I stopped painting in 2002 and traveled worldwide for ten years to gather more inspiration. When my beloved mum died, it was a life-changing event that prompted me to start painting again. My style changed completely, as did my technique: I created environments and furnished imaginary rooms on canvas by creating new, unexpected, magical interiors, which I interpret as sanctuaries. This is the path that led me to develop my current style.”
What is the most powerful element of your artistic inspiration?
“I start painting without an outside trigger of inspiration. The painting process itself is of the utmost importance in my daily life. Painting is comparable to breathing for me. I like to plunge into my painting process as others plunge into a pool. Creating a new painting is an effort to balance between visualizing and reflecting on my surroundings and emotions. The subjects of my work reflect a myriad of daily impressions from traveling and being in motion. While painting, I get an extraordinary sense of personal and creative freedom. Two days ago, I just arrived home from a big trip to Saudi Arabia. The impressions I gained there, with the different historical, political, geographical, and religious backgrounds, have greatly affected me. It will be a surprise, even to me, what kind of influence these images will have on me and which colors, emotions, and experiences will be reflected in my upcoming artwork.”
Describe the underlying theme of your work
“I compose bright, surprising settings like a luxury jewel box and assimilate my interiors to unknown sanctuaries with high vibes by metabolizing my experiences, observations, and impressions into interior pictures. I compose collage elements, sea creatures, plants, and images from art history into new spatial structures and give rebirth to the classical interior. In my highly detailed paintings, with their tapestry-like designs, you will find interiors with fish, leopards, Chinese porcelain, ceramics, baroque furniture, and retro-style influences. Everything in my paintings is playful, ambiguous, and multi-layered. I love variations within a theme and image quotations. My artwork is much more than an assemblage of colors and patterns to please the eye. I build new environments which relate to nothing seen before. I want my pure aesthetic energy to flow out of my artwork and brighten the viewer's mind with pure buzz and pleasant excitement.
I love to break the traditional methods of spatial visualization and the three-dimensional physical illusions of a room to make the viewer's perception of reality absurd. I want to allow my audience to look behind the bare, well-known pictorial sphere by leaving behind the classically taught composition and inventing more layers within the two-dimensional canvas. Sometimes I enlarge the interior space through perspective illusions and add collage elements, which I collect every day, for additional connotation. By breaking the classical view, I can generate a new experience for my audience, pointing them to emotional reality. I turn my motives into bright, cheering works of art, like an explosion of colors and organic shapes. Everybody is welcome to participate.”
Take us through your creative process
“Creating is like breathing. Painting is surviving.
The painting process itself is of the utmost importance in my daily life. Painting is comparable to breathing for me. I like to plunge into my painting process as others fall into a pool. Creating a new image is an effort to balance between visualizing and reflecting on my surroundings and emotions. The subjects of my work reflect a myriad of daily impressions from traveling and being in motion. While painting, I get an extraordinary sense of personal and creative freedom. From the basic idea of perspective, I developed the layout of the constructed space, which I am wallpapering. I overpaint my interior compositions with an old master glaze technique and a structure of shadows and complementary colors to increase the luminosity of my work. I capture detailed and precise moments that bring a fresh and intriguing perspective to the world's reality. As the viewer sees now existing in a different light, context, or resolution, familiar objects appear as something new. ”
How would you define your artwork?
“It’s all about the room, about space, about interiors. On a superficial view, one might say a colorful composition featuring some decorative stylistic, vivid elements with storytelling hints in a sometimes confusing 3-dimensional room. On closer inspection, it opens up to a more profound interpretation: Multi-layered, storytelling, colorful, loud, exciting, explosive, mysterious spaces. There are a lot of hidden symbols of perseverance, fertility, and persistence. When you find a bird in my artwork, like a goldfinch, it is not just a decorative tropical bird. My pictorial elements always have connotations. Courageously I put a bird or a fish and furniture and combine these elements with sometimes gleaming and dominant colors, adding a rich fruit still life to a well-done composition with hints of deeper perspective by giving a view in hidden rooms. It needs time to get into my themes. I can’t expect this specific background knowledge from my audience.
For this reason, I comment on my pictures and give insights into composition and meaning. The decision to combine these elements within my picture composition arises each time anew because the plain image or the pure abstract composition is not enough for me: I like to offer. Further, deeper content is not only to please the eye. I want to build environments and interiors which relate to nothing seen before. My paintings present contrasts: organic and technical, black and white and brightly colored, large and small, geometric-perspective, freehand drawing, illusion, and collaged reality. From the basic idea of perspective, I developed the layout of the constructed space, which I am wallpapering. I overpaint my interior compositions with an old master glaze technique and a structure of shadows and complementary colors to increase the luminosity of my work.”
What do you believe to be the role of an artist in society?
“The pursuit of beauty is the socially formed role of an artist. Art and Artists reflect the known and the new, the growth and changes. Thus, the first role of an artist is to teach the understanding of beauty and to broaden our view. But to be honest, I also paint for selfish, personal reasons. Only some things in my paintings have a message or are socially significant. That must be mentioned in all. I also design and paint for my peace of mind. Of course, nowadays, I can transport my "peace of mind" via social media to the outside world. If this arouses interest, that's, of course, entirely in my interest. Culture is considered the lifeblood of society and time. Art can help to reflect the truth symbolically. Art itself has excellent value. It broadens the perspective, offers innovation and provocation, questions the familiar, and stimulates discourse. But the ideal value of art also has a price. The market value of art is an increasingly important factor in public life, which is at the expense of the content of art.”
Which artists influence you most?
“My highly detailed paintings, with their tapestry-like designs, are often reminiscent of Matisse, Bonnard, and Fauvism but continue to exuberant expression. The admirably disruptive pictorial structure of Georg Baselitz's paintings has made as strong an impression on me as the clinging forms of sculptor Eduardo Chillida, which I often use in my pictorial compositions. The precise brushstroke of impressionist Maximilien Luce is just as exciting and worth imitating as the bold, brutal violence of the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, whom I greatly admire. At the same time, I am fascinated by the strict order of Land Art from Jannis Kounellis, which I adore just as much in its wonderful sequence and structure as the straightforward Bauhaus design of the founding director Walter Gropius. For me, it's not a far step to the delightful mystical color spaces of Marc Rothko, to whom I am equally devoted. [Maximilien Luce, Walter Gropius, Mark Rothko, Edouardo Chillida, Jannis Kounellis, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat]”
