Sieglinde Wagner About my work

Artist Statement
My Work is a fixed moment of a curiosity that I have chosen to form.
Before I am creating in a process, I study with my inner soul
the being of the object of the creation. I see with my inner eye.
During my painting the dialogue is most important beteen me and my work. My hands are doing and at the same time I am lost in contemplation. The room between is full of unknown wisdom that comes to me. But this is not to be told - it is a no-go to form these words. In reality there are not enough words to tell what is going on.
To understand the here and now I sometimes overpaint my work with a white colour so that the here and now has the future where a possibility is given to a change: To change the here and now into a new form of future.

Artist Statement 2016
My works are situated in the overlap between art and art therapy. I’m interested in the inner life of human emotions and living contexts. During the creation it’s very important to me to have a dialogue not only within myself, but also with the image.
Abstract painting, abstract drawing and figurative creations
Sometimes I simply get started with the materials at hand and completely give myself over to the process of creation, without knowing what the final product will be or what I want to say with this work.
Oftentimes the meaning of what I’m doing only becomes clear to me as I’m working or even after I’m done. From the subconscious to the conscious. The question here is whether my artistic work has a therapeutic effect, of whether the therapist in me demands an artistic expression.
Ink drawings, created from the subconscious without stopping, such as “The Black Hole”, “Irritation”, “Body Face” or “Body Wisdom” – as well as animal images, which emerge from deep inside me as if from a dream, came to be without any plan to depict or create anything. The only thing I prepare is the material.
The space appears in undesigned activity. It requires a certain absence of thought – meaning I deliberately try to forget what I know from the moment I begin to draw in order to focus completely on the process of creation. The results are often a surprise even to me, because my hand is guided by something other, higher, unknown or not-yet-known. The messages of my own art often catch me off guard.
The dialogue with the “finished” drawing is a central element. It helps me to continue the thoughts which have come up as I gaze at the work, and to create another image – my images create me, they fuel new thoughts, which in turn create new works – a continuous circle of imagery and creation flowing into each other.
My figurative works are created in temporal cycles. That means there are series of female nudes, seeking a discussion about the reclaiming the female view of femininity, such as in “Female Nude Inner Life”, “Female Figures”, “Yoni Origin”, “Original Memory”. Figures of goddesses such as “The Female Ancestors of Venus” and the “Ouroborus” series hark back to partly forgotten matriarchal social structures, which have been buried under a patriarchally structured civilization and have already been partly snuffed out.
From interesting works of old masters, I create new image ideas, such as “Europa and the Golden Cow”, “Mother or the Expulsion from Paradise” or “The Liberated Woman”. Old images are re-interpreted in the now and provoke a re-thinking of old structures and conditions.
The contrast between the artificial and the natural inspires me. In my photography I capture seemingly unnoticed natural forms, which can be seen in my series “Tree Traces”, “Yoni Illusions”, and “Beaver Bites”.
My preferred materials are pipe cleaners, broken and discarded items such as footballs, and many other things, as well as painting materials such as goache colors, oil pastel crayons, ink, pastel crayons, oil.
My preferred techniques: painting with various techniques, sgrafitto with hands and tissues. In order to understand the now I sometimes paint over the past with white paint. This way something new can emerge from the present.
Expectations: As an artist and art therapist I move in a landscape that uses art and aesthetics as a means to bring balance to what has become unhealthy or fallen into disorder. To make the internal unconscious visible on an outside. Sometimes this leads to new melodies or rhythms, which I transfer to instruments such as Berimbau, Tschanggo or Sansula. I’m interested in the inner life, the expression of the soul, in a world of diversity.