Welcome in the world of my art!
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Günter Wuttig, artist through passion. I was born on the 27th of April 1941 in Berlin. Despite of my degree in technology and economics, the love for painting has already fascinated me in my early adolescence. Later, I realised that the creation of statuary art / sculptures is another thrilling field, which requires completely different efforts from the artist than an oil painting. A modern statue partly provides truly diverse possibilities for artistic depiction, compared to a painting, because of its three-dimensional expansion.
About the development of a painting
What excites me about art is the unexpected, the new. I am captured in my imagination during the creation of a painting. Even though have the subject in mind, both the curiosity and impatience for the final result are huge. With ongoing progress, the colours, shapes and the composition take on life of their own. This often gives me a feeling of watching myself painting. The brush almost effortlessly slides over the canvas, each new spot of paint unconsciously inspires me to attach a special direction and tone to my painting.
Disappointment and excitement
Painting is a rigorous lover. She does not forgive. One line too much, one shade too dark, a wrong composition, and the painting is destroyed. As all artists know, the attempt to correct is pointless then, the magic is gone. This is how, during the creation of artistic objects, moments of desperation take turns with flashes of elation. Suddenly you are standing in front of a just finished painting and realize that you fabricated a little masterpiece.
Scene and desired message dictate the style
My style for creating oil-paintings and sculptures is not to be labelled directly. Each topic, each scenery, each portrait carries an expression which can be felt and seen only by the artist him-/herself. For example, you actually can paint a tree as realistic as a photograph; yet very often the craving to give this tree a whole new appearance by abstract painting is stimulative. When speaking about abstract or halfway-abstract painting, it is not, against common opinion, just a simplified form of art. It is quite the opposite – an abstract painting demands much more empathy for the scene to depict. While nature predetermines shape, colour and composition for the conventional painting, the abstract form of representation demands much more imagination.
The eras of an artist’s life
For almost every artist, the attitude towards the expression of artistic objects shifts and changes over time. Just like artists such as Picasso and Kandinsky started with the objectified art, their understanding of art has altered and progressed. Colours, shapes and style vanished for a completely different, – regarding the artist – new and personal tone.
I wasn’t different. In my countless journeys to Ireland, Scotland, the Tuscany and Provence I hit upon a magnitude of incredible scenes. My artistic heart beat faster and I devotedly began depicting those impressions on a canvas. I very much enjoyed it.
Yet I wanted more and more to give my paintings a special tone, providing the nature-given scene with a special meaning. Or even creating paintings, which had nothing to do with reality, only by imagination. If I sat in an old alley in a southern mountain village and painted, the outcome was plain and simple a painting, which represented the atmosphere of this very village. If I wandered through the rhododendron woods in Ireland, then I ended up with a lifelike picture of this beautiful, colourful scenery. As time went by, this alone did not satisfy me anymore, since I craved my emotions, my personal message to be expressed through my own “language”.
My aspiration for the message of my paintings
To be able to incorporate my own attributes in the paintings, a severe change of style, expression, flair was necessary. That is why the style of the artistic illustration is chosen spontaneously by me, depending on the object at hand. At all times it is my task as an artist to attach an expression to the painting or the sculpture that surprises the viewer and catches his/her imagination. But not by overloaded compositions; very often a special relation of specific colours or a few brush strokes at the right spot are just what it takes to trigger an unexpected effect and a mysterious aura. This can materialise further during the creation process of oil paintings or sculptures. Let’s face it – an artist, no matter his/her imagination, can’t always predict what the final result is going to look like.
Art is freedom
Now I’d like to talk about the fulfilment, which is provided by the art for the artist. Countless painters, statuaries, from creators of sculptures to experimental art have something in common throughout the world: the joy and satisfaction during the creation of an oil painting, as well as on the completion of a real artwork – which doesn’t happen very often. Art is the last stronghold of infinite freedom, there are no limits. It’s safe to say that not everyone who is painting is to be titled an artist; but those, who have been blessed by god with the knack and talent to achieve something meaningful, no matter if regarded to painting or the sculpturing of artistic figures, have actually a hold on enriching the world of art, giving life some happiness and meaning back, which had been lost in our fast-living world. And that’s the kind of passion that the real and competent artist is going to handle in a responsible way, it’s easy breaking unwritten laws.
Art is the rainbow on a grey day
But not only the life of the art lover is enriched; it is the artist himself whose life is changed by walking down new and interesting paths. How much must van Gogh have loved painting, when he kept creating new masterpieces throughout his life despite poverty and health problems, selling only one painting in his lifetime. Which artist does not dream of a sun-drenched studio in southern areas? Even when it’s only a small room of his/her own that he/she labels “his” studio – it is one of the most important places for him. And in a social context, around his/her art colleagues or art lovers you can passionately dispute over an unconventional piece of art – but you never argue! Because – that’s how Picasso put it once: “There are no good or bad pictures, there are only talented or untalented painters.”
The more fascinating the artwork, the bigger the conflict
As we’re already talking about artworks: no matter how fulfilling it is for the artist having created a special painting, he/she is yet in a conflict. The picture came out of his/her own hands and fantasy, it is his/her “child”. That’s his/her only one. Each copy would come out different. Letting go of it? But he/she must subsist. Furthermore he/she wouldn’t be able to please the world with his/her artistic highlight by keeping the painting all for himself. Sooner or later he/she has to sell it, which is not quite easy considering the huge supply of more or less good “masterpieces”. And then it’s gone. He/she can’t reproduce by repeatedly using the same form like in bronze casting. He/she can’t print it a hundred thousand times like a writer does with his/her bestseller. Once the painting is sold, it is gone from his life. I can absolutely understand this, many artist own paintings they would never sell.