GDR Fences

I have to say, that I was never much interested in GDR-Fences. While growing up in the GDR, they were not that important for me... mainly because I was surrounded by these fences and always saw them.
For me.. they didn't brought the same images or fantasies of princesses and tales, which I had with much older fences.
But, when the wall broke down and more and more of these fences vanished, because obviously no one really liked them, I finally started paying attention.
These attention even grow, when many people from the western part of Germany were fascinated with the colorful and artistic fences and were showing them in art exhibitions. These fences were build up from everything which was somehow available on the market (which mostly wasn't much). So, very seldom one fence is like the other, but they often followed very modern and modernistic designs and were nicely colored the border to the own house. ...

The Friday Problem

This fun-installation on cardboard is explaining, why although we have been in Agra... we never saw the Taj Mahal... and now guess, on which day of the week we went there... ;-)

Historical Fences in Potsdam-West

Since long, I have an admittedly odd passion for fences.
While living in Potsdam I always saw these old, magical fairytale fences of different architectural epochs and after long time looking and liking, I finally started making pictures of them.



Nowadays many of these fences are already vanished, because when one of the old art nouveau and art decorative houses were renovated, the fence often got thrown away and replaced through a young, much more standard version, which is easier to maintain.
Many homeowners didn't even know, that there were extra money available from the government, just for the reconstruction of the historic fences, with the intention to preserve them... For me, even the most rusty, nearly broken old fence was preferable to any shining-boring new product, which didn't seem to have the same soul...and didn't fit to the old houses, either.

Pictures

Here are some pictures which I made over the years in oil, ink, pencil and watercolor.

Some are already five to ten years old, but most of the watercolor paintings were made in this year, when I restarted my little layman artist career...

Work in Progress

In the last weeks I was very busy with painting by myself and I didn't painted furniture, a picture frame or on any kind of wood as usual, but this time it was about a picture by itself.
I didn't worked with Acryl on Canvas since long and was a bit nervous about the very beginning.. but some things are maybe like cycling... you just don't forget about them and even when I was as usual very unhappy with the result (what exactly did I thought about the huge hole in the earthen pot, where the 'mehndi' pattern is shining through...?!) its good, that I started again.. and hopefully I will paint something in future, which final result makes me at least a little bit less disappointed... :-)

Thrift Store – Pictures

Sometimes it makes fun to visit Second hand stores and just have a look for the available pictures in frames and without.
Try to think about in which houses they once might have hung and what personality they resembled and from time to time you can also bring a new old picture back home for your own collection...