Together with my fellow artist Valérie Paquereau, I am participating in the Veedel event Kunst im Carré with our Kunstraum 268 at Zülpicher Straße 268a.
At Kunst im Carré, artists from the Veedel neighborhood showcase their art in public spaces. For two weeks, the neighborhood becomes an open gallery—and we are part of it!
Kunstraum268 is one of many other artist studios in Cologne/Sülz. Stop by, enjoy a variety of art, be inspired, and get in touch with us.
We will be there for you on October 12, October 17, and October 25 from 3 to 6 p.m.
The artists:
Valérie Paquereau
After studying geosciences at the École Normale Supérieure Rue d'Ulm, Valérie was able to fulfill one of her dreams of working in a nature park. However, drawing and painting have always accompanied her wherever her studies or professional life have taken her:
To Montreal with a painter who introduced her to the academic techniques of drawing and oil painting. To the Academy of Fine Arts in Cherbourg and Caen, where she was able to complete and deepen the various techniques (graphics, acrylics, oils, etc.).
But it was only in Cologne that she discovered watercolor through the painter Lucian Drenea. Since her encounter with this technique, the artist has never let go of watercolor.
Artist Statement:
“I have always had two passions: one for nature and one for drawing and painting.”
Watercolor is a lesson for life: The paper retains the imprint of every action and every brushstroke. Our mistakes are part of the painting. You have to learn to integrate them.
It is not necessary to try to evoke the light with a color or a special technique: It is already there, in the white of the paper.
Like Asian ink painting, the watercolor technique is an art of reduction, where less is more. It is the art of sketching, of spontaneity and of sudden outbursts.
Watercolor is the way to the essence and the essential.
JANA DETTMER
Jana Dettmer, born in 1965 in Braunschweig, is a commercial lawyer specializing in insolvency law. In addition to her successful career, she decided to study painting at the Freie Kunstschule in Cologne from 2013 to 2015 for personal reasons. Here she received the necessary technical art skills.
Since 2015, she has continued her self-taught development and has taken the opportunity to take up assistantships with artists she knows and to deal even more intensively with questions and possibilities of painting. Through various contacts with artists, she is encouraged to use her intuition and sensitivity for the variety of psychological signals and to explore and convey the aesthetic, psychological and philosophical meanings of colors in her paintings.
Artist Statement:
My paintings and installations of coloured squares are often about nothing but pure color, about the work as an independent platform, as an illusionary space that enables the viewer to really see themselves and to recognize what makes them free and happy. Each work is a color space in the sense of an energetically charged setting that offers viewers the opportunity to immerse themselves in order to feel the power and energy of color. Through reduction and condensation, I have created fascinating moments of clarity and insight, of intensity.
Those who succeed in pausing and tracing the interaction of color in the picture surface and in space will encounter themselves. Self-realization is a process that anyone can change, stop or restart at any time.