Interview with Ilse Vollbrechtausen: Plastic artist

May I introduce you to Ilse Voll, visual artist and graphic designer, who is currently studying her Master's Degree in History of Art.
[Para la versión en Español de ésta entrevista da click   aquí] 

Ilse with one of her large-format paintings as background

1. LuceBuona: Thank you Ilse, for taking the time to answer these questions for us. Can you please tell us about your training and education? 

Ilse:  I started drawing since I was very little, and at school, I had drawing and art lessons. I really never attend formal art training until I was studying at the university and then completed courses and workshops on watercolor painting, illustration and sketching. In 2013 I joined an art studio, which I am still part of, but before this, I haven't really been painting formally since it was always just a hobby. 

I don't believe I had any formal education on art, it is simply more of a sensitivity that I was born with, and also I was exposed to an environment in which art was appreciated. Since I was a child, my favorite hobby was drawing and I was always encouraged to keep doing it, but never through formal art classes, but more of in freely.. on my own.

2. LuceBuona: So for how long you have been painting? Ilse: Since 2013 when I joined Professor Gabriela Haro's art studio.

3. LuceBuona: Can you explain your art to us (in 100 words or less)?

Ilse: It goes from copies of impressionist oil paintings, Monet's water lilies are my favorite for copying, Van Gogh paintings, to large format abstract expressionist acrylic paintings (on frames that are over 2 meters of size). To paint these last ones, I took Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Motherwell as a guide, until I found my own style, which has thick strokes of black paint over backgrounds that come in different colors and spilled with paint.

"2014" by Ilse Vollbrechtausen

4. LuceBuona: How has your art evolved or changed through the years?

Ilse: I started making copies of paintings, especially from those I like by Jackson Pollock in a small format (55 X 100 cms) and little by little I started to try with backgrounds of different colors, faded backgrounds, spilling paint with different tools, brushes of different sizes and thicknesses. I also started painting in larger frames each time and using brighter and bolder colors, even fluorescent. I believe I have now found my personal style, even though I am still testing and experimenting. Lately, I have tried painting on large-scaled frames put together as a diptych to avoid limited space and dimensions.

Close up from "2014" painting.

5.LuceBuona: Tell us, Ilse, what inspires you?

Ilse: The creativity, the colors, the people who dare to try new things without any fear of being rejected. I believe that is the idea that the artists I admire had in mind: to create something never seen, risking the fact that people may not understand it.
People are not always going to understand, even they can reject a new idea, but that doesn't mean the idea is not good. Time revindicates the geniuses, even those whose work was not appreciated in their time.

6.LuceBuona: What artists work do you admire even if it does not influence directly or visibly your artworks?

Ilse: I admire several artists: Vincent Van Gogh, the impressionists: Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas. I admire any artist that has presented a new vision to the world, their vision, those artists how stood up for their vision until the end. Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo. Not only painters, but also musicians, writers, poets, film-makers... all of those that believed in their work and their vision, and who shared it with us.
I admire the artists that are not scared of being vulnerable and that allows us to see, through their art, the most intimate corners of their emotions. I admire many great minds.

"2016"

7.LuceBuona: Why painting? why in large format?

Ilse: Because of the malleability of the paint, it's rhythm and the lightness of how it glides in the canvas. Because it seems like when I am painting, the paint and I become one, she goes where I ask her to and its response is to give me some whimsical and disguised shapes that I would have never imagined.

And the large format is because I like to feel at ease, with enough space to express what I want to say.

8.LuceBuona: Please share with us, how do you define art?

Ilse: It is an expression of the person, their emotions and their interior. It is another way of communicating. It is the testimony of someone's mind. Maybe there is no direct communication between the viewer and the artists, but through art, we can find out a lot about the person who created it.

"2019"

9.LuceBuona: Is there something about art that you dislike -whether from our time or historically? Ilse: The fact that people think that art should be likable by all. For people to try and define it, and to determine what is art and what it is not. Just like with food, there are more educated palates that can appreciate certain artworks, that doesn't mean that the most simple and modest food can't be a delicacy.

I dislike the fact that we are trying to tag art and to give it a value or validate it as if all forms of art where the same: we cannot place in the same category a marble sculpture from the Roman Empire on the third century after Christ with an urban mural from 2019. The means for which these artworks were created are different, the artists, the time, the materials... everything is different. Each artwork has its value and validity within its own parameters. Maybe the first is priceless because it is an ancient work that endured time, but that doesn't mean that is has a larger value when it comes to expression. Art is very diverse and what for some is considered art, for others may not.

10.LuceBuona: Lastly, how do you expect your art to evolve in the future? Ilse: For the moment I believe I found my style, but I still have some experimenting to do within it. Maybe a change of colors or in formatting, maybe there will be changes in the shapes, without them going too far from what it is now and it has begun to be. Even when I try with other techniques and materials, I hope that the essence is the same. Unless I change radically as a person unless I no longer feel identified with these shapes unless the art stops being relevant to me.
Thank you, Ilse, for sharing your art, your thoughts and your time with us!

Ilse poses with one of her artworks at Gabriela Haro's art studio.

Let's support our artists! By getting to know and sharing their works!

** All of the illustrations gathered in this post belong to their author Fernanda Soriano and were only included in this article as a way to promote her work.