LAYERS THAT OVERLAP - IN MY PAINTING AND IN MY LIFE

For a long time I worked in a world where everything had to be measurable. Financial and investment economist, working independently on projects for banks and asset management firms. Structures, formulas, solutions. The value of things expressed in numbers.

Painting taught me something different.

Not as a gentle hobby alongside a professional life – but as a real counterworld. One where control stops working. Where the next step can't be planned. Where you have to trust the process, even when you don't yet know where it leads.

That wasn't an easy lesson to learn. And it's never truly finished.

My works develop intuitively and process-oriented – starting with an initial idea that I release as soon as the painting begins to find its own direction. I work in layers: acrylic, marble powder, collaged paper fragments, imprints, structures. Each layer covers the one before it while simultaneously revealing depth beneath. What lies underneath doesn't disappear – it waits to be discovered.

That tension is what interests me: between the large and the small, between the first glance and the second, between control and the moment you give it up.

My color-reduced works in black, grey and warm white emerge from the same place as the more expressive ones. Only quieter. More concentrated. With a stillness that leaves space – for the painting, and for the person standing in front of it.

I paint for people who know what it feels like to always want everything under control. And who sense there is something beyond that.

PASSION - EMOTION - INTUITION

These three words describe my impulse creating abstract art.

Nature is my most dominant source of inspiration. But also details of old industrial buildings, steel bridges of abandoned architecture especially if it is combined with traces of erosion or rust can be so inspiring for shapes, combinstions of colours and a first impession for the composition.

Also the spontanous decision for a special song when starting a new artwork inspires and effects my mostly expressive and dynamic creative process.

My approach is more intuitive than concept-driven. I love to react on the particular status quo after each step and to sometimes develope a completely new direction in finishing the artwork.

I often work in series while each painting inspires the others, which causes a permanent dynamic and sometimes surprising progress during the creative process.

Mostly I start a new painting with a ground coat - not always in white, sometimes colored - to establish a first structured layer. This priming means a kind of ruminant intro into the painting. All layers can be developed with brushes, scraps or in pouring colours onto the canvas. I love to combine the use of different tools and techniques in one painting - everything is possible and allowed to achieve deepness and vitality in the artwork. All steps shall lead to a painting with many little inspiring and fascinating details.

My preferred material is acrylic, but I also use oil colours, oilpastels, charcoal, grafit, pigments - not only to generate special effects but also to apply voltage into the composition.

Particularly in my colour-reduced, nearly monochrome works I often use ashes, marble dust or other material to create excitement.

I prefer large formats but I also love to create small pieces on paper, usually in series.

My greatest joy is, if the collector falls in love again every day with the artwork in always discovering new details and fascinating parts in the artwork.

If my artworks permanently donate happiness in the same way I feel during creating the artwork, my mission is completed and I am blessed.

Margret Trimborn