My artist name is Ma Knut and I am a female artist
& oil painter, who lives and works in Stuttgart/Germany since 2018. I have always been creative,
so I decided to pursue a career in Spatial design
whilst living in London/UK. During
my architectural studies and my work as a Spatial designer in London, my creative output was mainly digital minimalism and monochrome colour, which felt very
restrictive and limiting. In 2015 however I had the urge to try something else, so I started exploring the painting, whilst still working as an Events Designer. This type of new expression gave me a
new identity, which also led to the idea to take on an abstract name and call
myself Ma Knut, as means of breaking with the mundane.
Self-taught, the painting felt more natural,
especially when using polychrome colours and focusing on more organic shapes
and surreal compositions, it felt liberating!
The surrealness of another dimension is however
a reoccurring motive of my work ever since, it is also a way for me to express
my metaphysical approach to reality, by visually questioning it.
The inspiration for my art however comes
from my interests in nature, reading of ancient history, mythology,
anthropology, philosophy that deal with the metaphysical and phenomenological ideas.
My love for traveling and my personal observations
of different cultures and their art, also shape my art a lot.
Now, living in a cultural environment of the
Germany’s South, where the contemporary art scene is dominated by machine like minimalism,
where the industrial and digital appearance of art is more appreciated, my art
somehow feels out of place! Great so! Intentionally, my art gives the
possibility to dream and imagine again. It highlights the basics, the raw instincts,
the irrational side of our human being, a side that we readily ignore and suppress.
My art is a visual expression of the imagination to create another dimension, with
the possibility of the supernatural encounters and magic. My art is what the
mythologies are made of, using as per C.G. Jung the full capacity of the true language
of our subconscious. It is a personal revolt against the seriousness and the monochromaticity
of the everyday life.
In general, I prefer to paint spontaneously,
so my paintings are rarely pre-sketched or developed in advance. Every painting
starts with one main element that floats in my mind, which then is put straight
onto a new canvas; the rest of the composition develops by itself. Every
painting is a process indeed! There are some elements that keep reappearing, so
for example the eye, which stands for the animate nature and the life itself, or
the white square that sometimes takes on a three-dimensional shape of a cube, this
shape has a personal meaning to me and is in fact a signature of mine.
