Interview With 1stAngel

Edition Handdruck
Welcome to the Artists Blog !!

1stAngel: When did you first become interested in art?
Edition: I remember a fascination with images since I was a kid when I was learning to read and got my first illustrated books . At that time I started to draw horses by trying to copy my toys.

I got aware that there is something like art only when I was about 10 or 11 years old. Someone gave me my first encyclopedia and I remember those tiny colorful reproductions of old masters and modern art like Mondrian. That was in the mid sixties by the way.

1stAngel: What style of art do you use most?
Edition: Instead of speaking about style I much prefer to develop my very own handwrite . The term style from my point of view is occupied by important art movements such as impressionism or expressionism. My work is representational and routed in contemporary art with a strong influence by illustration or hand made graphics..

Abbaye Silvacane Provence landscape Drawing

1stAngel: Has your style changed from when you first began as an artist?
Edition: Of course there has been a development in my work and it should continue. In the beginning my work was very much influenced by German expressionism,but that is gone meantime.

1stAngel: What medium do you use?
Edition: The monotype prints that I do are works on paper and the colors are oil colors in tubes or as sticks. Apart from that I do drawings with pen,ink and charcoal.

1stAngel: What made you choose that medium ?
Edition: There are several reason why I do nothing else but drawing and monotype printing. The main reason is that the process of monotype printing gives me a lot of freedoom. Both activities still have a lot of undiscovered potential, that I don´t see in plein air painting for example anymore at least for me. For a number of years I did plein air paintings,but I could clearly see in which direction this would take me. In monotype printing you can “invent” something new every day and there is not such a heavy “historic overhead” as in oil painitng for example.

Chartreuse Avignon provence landscape

1stAngel: Do your ideas come from life or imagination?
Edition: In my drawings I observe things and then I start to imagine a possible print later. These are the two phases of my creative process…observing as a kind of input or visual programming and then I create an output modified by imagination.

1stAngel: How do you choose your images and colours?
Edition: My favorite subjects are landscape and architecture the classic subject of the “veduta”, I am fascinated by outdoors and the sense of place the “genus loci”. Years ago I used to go around by car in search of suitable subjects and it was quite hard to find something that way. So I stopped that and started to go on footwalks with my sketchbook and did drawings of places that catched my attention. Very quickly I noticed that I didn´t need to search anymore because there is an almost unlimited pleanty subjects within a raduis of 3-4 kilometers around the place I live.

Herepian Provence Decorative Landscape

I have a kind of masterplan in my head which subjects I want to work not only for the next couple of years but for the coming 2 decades. As to the choice of colors I have to say that at present I am very much attracted by black and white or monochrome work. When it comes to colors I start to play with certain color combinations in my head. Then I start the process with that ideas and then during work there will be intuitive improvisation.

1stAngel: Who is your favourite artist?
Edition: I have many favourite artitsts and it´s terrible to give only one name. I admire Simon Fletcher, a fantastic pastel and water color artist from the UK now living in south of France ( I had workshops with him). He studied among others with David Hockney and he knew in person another of my favourite british artists: John Piper the most inventive printmaker I can imagine. Also I get a lot of inspiration from the work of Pierre Alechinsky and Cy Twombly, both artists with a strong relation to drawing.

Picturesque village rural landscape

I have to mention Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn as well as Kiki Smith and Pat Steir and last not least a young German plein air painter Christopher Lehmpfuhl,whom I had the pleasure to meet on workshops too.

1stAngel: What is your favourite piece of work by yourself?
Edition: I have no particular preference for a specific piece. However there is quite naturally a particular attachment to my sketchbooks,which I would never give away.

1stAngel: How much time (on average) does it take to complete a work?
Edition: I am in a continous process from thinking about images to drawing and then to the final print. Sometimes everthing seems to go very smoothly and sometimes I need three or four evenings only for the print. My capacity is limited and in average I might be able to do 75-100 prints per year, not more. :

1stAngel: What do you do to overcome a ‘block’?
Edition: I never experienced a serious “block”.In fact I can´t wait to get out for drawing and when I come back my head is already full of print ideas. Walking outdoors keeps my creativity in movement. But of course art is always about working with and against obstacles. I have only a very simple answer to that : I keep on trying again and again.

1stAngel: How do you know something is ‘finished’? Is it easy to walk away?
Edition: I watch the developement of a print step by step and take breaks in between. I stop when I get the impression that adding more to the image will make it collapse or destroy the tension.

1stAngel: Have you had exhibits in galleries?
Edition: No I have not had any contacts with professional galleries yet. I do not force that, I know it will happen when the right time has come..

1stAngel: Have you any exhibits in galleries planned for the future?
Edition: I do one or two exhibitions/year in local public exhibition places. This year there will be a show in June about the vine yards in a neighbour village. I have worked on that project since December 2006.

1stAngel: What are your plans for the future?
Edition: At present I work on a project called “Piranesi Paraphrases” and on the vine yard procject (www.weinundlandschaft.de). Besides I do continous work on the “image” of my home town. I will start another project mid this year about our local fruit tree meadows.

Apart from the handwork of drawing and hand printing I develop a professional publishing business for editing and marketing of reproductions of my artwork as glicee prints,calendars and greeting cards to private and corporate clients. For this reason I have founded the company “Edition Handdruck” in 2006 together with my wife Ulrike. We want to develop Edition Handdruck into a high quality publishing company with unique artistic profile.

Thank you SO much, Edition Hardruck for the interview. I am so honoured to have done this

You can see his websites here

Monotype Prints : www.squidoo.com/editionh

Imagekind Page : http://EditionH.imagekind.com

German Artblog : www.edition-handdruck.de

Piranesi project : www.edition-handdruck.de/piranesi/piranesi.html