Birgit Huttemann-Holz

    
Le Jardin, mon Amour

I am touched by glorious landscapes, the close ups, and the long views.  It is here, when I stumble upon an exterior landscape that mirrors my interior wilderness that my creative process starts. Painting for me is a colorful musing of an interior world projected outwards. The landscapes and florals bleed hues of pink, magenta, purple, orange, and gold, alluring and alarming.  I coax the image to the surface with color as my leading subconscious gateway.  At heart being a contemporary romanticist, I depict the grandeur of nature and the place of humanity within it. My emotional truth, my paintings touch on the Human Condition, life, and its fragility.

Detroit, 2026

Jenseits der Landschaft

Ich liebe die Natur, ob Camping, wandern, Sternschnuppen zählen, sie ist mein Rückzugsort, mein Kraftfeld, mein Ort des Staunens. Jedoch male ich nicht in der Natur  Vielmehr zieht es mich in das Atelier um das Erfahrene, zu vertiefen und zu ergründen.
Malen ist für mich ein farbliches Nach- Sinnen einer inneren Welt; 
Emotionale Wahrheit auf Leinwand und Papier projiziert.

Erinnerung und Imagination sind zwei miteinander verlinkte Fakultäten des Gehirns. Jeder Akt der Erinnerung ist auch immer mehr oder weniger ein Akt der Imagination.

Die Landschaften und Florale Bilderwelten, welche mir antworten schimmern Rosenrot, Magenta, Gold, Kupfer und Schwarz, manchmal siebenmal Blau, verlockend und alarmierend.
Dabei wird die Farbwahl, der spontane Akt im Atelier, der Griff zur ersten Farbe des Bildes, zum Schlüssel Schloss Prinzip meines Unbewussten und lässt das Bild langsam aufsteigen.

In den letzten zwei Jahren erhielt mehr und mehr die schwere Demenz Erkrankung meiner Mutter, Einzug in mein Schaffen.
Entfremdung, bildliche Überlagerungen, Bruchstückhaftes werden Bausteine blühender Landschaften und ihrer immanenten Vergänglichkeit.

München, April 2025

Beyond the Landscape.

I love nature, whether camping, hiking, counting shooting stars — it is my refuge, my source of strength, my place of wonder. Yet, I do not paint in nature. Rather, I am drawn to the studio to deepen and explore what I have experienced. Painting is, for me, a contemplative reflection in color on an inner world; emotional truth projected onto canvas and paper.

Memory and imagination are two interconnected faculties of the brain. Every act of remembering is always, to a greater or lesser extent, also an act of imagination.
The landscapes and floral worlds of images that respond to me shimmer in rose red, magenta, gold, copper, and black,sometimes sevenfold blue,seductive and alarming.
In this process, the choice of color, the spontaneous act in the studio, the reaching for the first color of a painting, becomes the key-and-lock principle of my unconscious, allowing the image to slowly emerge.

Over the past two years, my mother's severe dementia has increasingly found its way into my artistic work.
Alienation, visual overlays, and fragmentation become the building blocks of blooming landscapes and their inherent transience.

Munich, April 2025

By the Wayside

I am touched by glorious landscapes that teach us: there is a chance of non-separation, to be completed and humbled, to experience genesis and rebirth. It is here that I stumble upon an exterior landscape that mirrors my interior wilderness that I bring along with me, alluring and alarming.

In my newest series “Seeds, Grasses and Flowers” I am honoring the seemingly unspectacular: seeds, reeds, grasses, flowers, aka the microcosm of landscapes. The encaustic monotype process lends its unique beauty to heighten the experience of reading an abstraction as part of the whole.

Therefore, creating landscapes within landscapes.
Provence, France, 2023

Body of Wilderness 

I am touched by glorious landscapes that teach us: there is a chance of non-separation, to be completed and humbled, to experience genesis and rebirth. To stumble upon an exterior landscape that mirrors my interior wilderness that I bring along with me, alluring and alarming.

It is here in the recitation of the surrounding landscape, that the painting paints itself, urges new insight, that in hindsight has no recollection of how it became.

One body of wilderness.
Detroit 2022

Belle Isle
Deeply inspired by the beauty of flowers and landscapes, I push my subject to a place of gestural abstraction with sweeping gestures, layering curves, heightened by bold saturated tones. The process of mark making, color choice, and composition happens mostly subconsciously. It matures to a gestural dance revealing my utmost authentic voice; a dreamlike reconfiguration of emotional meanings.

The resulting energetic work shows a lush world, where nature is in constant celebration and invokes both my vision and feeling of a world where beauty and vulnerability are the touching keystones.

Detroit, 2019

The Weight of Orchids & Metaphor of Flora 
In 2014, I was awarded first place at the national NANA Competition at Lucky Street Gallery, Key West, FL and was granted a month long residency at The Studios of Key West. So, I packed my studio and transferred my life to the subtropical beautiful island, in February 2017.
On the first day I passed a front yard that was abundantly embellished by orchids.

I was immediately put under the spell of those beautiful flowers which were attached to the palm trees' trunks. They resembled swaying gorgeous color dots with a profound sense of vulnerability.

From that day on, I only printed and painted orchids, lush gardens and imaginary spaces, sanctuaries that have the power to stop time and let you reset.
First timid and delicate, I started to paint the flowers on my aluminum printing plate, only to grow bolder and more colorful with each following print.

It became a roar that changed my color palette and sparked multiple new series in my mind.

Monotype Printing Process:

The pigmented beeswax is melted on a hot aluminum plate and manipulated.The print is hand rubbed with a Japanese barin and then carefully pulled. One print is made of multiple unique printing processes and printed on both sides of the paper.
The printing process is challenging, because the wax continues to melt on the plate while printing. The paper gets translucent and saturated with the pigmented wax. The colors are uniquely brilliant and luminous and metal pigments sit as an embellishment on top of the paper.
I print in wax, because the painting process embodies vulnerability and failure. I leap and fail, but when I succeed I transcend tragedy and witness the genesis of grace and the ephemeral.

Birgit Huttemann-Holz, 2017/18  

Erotika   

I am only interested in making art if it is a challenge. It needs to hold excitement, attract my curiosity and usually refers to a theme or question that will reveal itself once the work/series is completed.

I often envision ideas, or see myself painting in the stage between sleep and awakening. Memories are stringed together, flying by; huge spaces evolve, but foremost: there is color.
Lately, I combine my work with my love for poetry. My favorite poet Yannis Ritsos and his expressive, erotic poems are finding their way back into my imagery. In my teens his poems lived on my body, now they are burned into my paintings and monotypes.
It is a fiery transition, in fast forward mode.

I paint and print in wax, because the process embodies vulnerability, my stepping stone for progress and evolution.
Birgit Huttemann-Holz, 2016

 
Seeking a Lost Eden
I am exploring our desire for a lost Eden. In our fast changing world the infinite splendor of the natural process of entropy and decay becomes a metaphor for the continuum: A fallen world, but free to overcome form and purpose. It is just a state of transition, of change, of evolution.
Fail has a dual nature of its own. It is at once a leap forward and a fall downward, one that can only be made by free human beings. The motivation for such a leap is triggered by curiosity and/or anxiety about the future and about being a human itself.

I always wanted to make paintings that told stories and suggested things, but more in a metaphorical sense - the mirror image of memory or fantasy.

I work with wax and I find myself hunting down the beauty of accidents and entropy.

Unlike oil paint, encaustic cannot be blended. I apply it in layers to achieve a similar optical mix and depth and I use Sgraffitto to reveal what was there just a moment ago, only to come up with a new image. In the process a lot of mistakes happen that cannot be foreseen, but lead to surprising solutions, yet often cannot be replicated. I paint in wax, because the painting process embodies failure, the vulnerability of progress and evolution. I leap and fail, but when I succeed I transcend tragedy and see the genesis of beauty and the ephemeral.

Birgit Huttemann-Holz, 2015