I have painted since I was able to speak and take my first own steps. I was married and have one son, Maximilian, who is 11 years old.
After school I worked writing books, in graphics, in advertising and in marketing for different companies and afterwards I worked in my own advertising agency. While I was working for a lot of great companies, I was able to learn more about colours and I got to work in other techniques, like for instance airbrush, and also I also worked with lots of different materials.
I have made a lot of ordered works never thinking about my own style.
In 2000 I became very ill. So I had to stop all my working activities. I spent a lot of time thinking about my life and my way of living. After the first diagnose, what physicians call cancer, I was shocked. They told that my time left to live would be very short. I have now lived longer then the physicians have predicted. I established my own way of living in deep natural love and peace, in painting, in being a human and in respecting life itself. The reason for changing my life was very hard, but I got a chance to love and hope, pray and believe. In a short time I received more than I ever could have been given in previous years. Creating is healing. I found my own way in creating art. Shown to me by something I called my “angels” who accompany me.
Previously I was working with the material, but now the material and I work together. I touch the colours, touch the material, and during this process I get the idea what to do with it. Sometimes I get an inspiration to create and I convert it directly. Sometimes I create a piece of art in 3 hours, sometimes it takes many weeks to finish it. Sometimes the material tells me what to do, and sometimes I see the next part of my work in the material. I like to work with natural materials and natural colours. Sometimes I take everything I can get my hands on to create my art, also the colours. Bubble bath, spices, ash from a cigarette and so on. Sometimes I don’t need brushes and other tools to create my art - only my hands and my thoughts. The touching touches my soul.
But recently there has been another aspect in painting pictures: I dreamt about it. Especially in my space-arts I was inspired in dreams. I saw the pictures and had to paint them directly in the middle of the night. I was very surprised to see a lot of similarities in my art and the pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.
In my thoughts, the global viewing and global thinking becomes a new dimension. I like to show this in my art, because they tell a story written in the past, they write the present and will be writing the future.
Birgit Sennewald
Berlin, in November 2004
This space artist is not available for sale.
Credit:
NASA & ESA
