....“A Human being is only a small part of the free streaming energy,which forms all of the universe“

I am an artist of inner art necessity. Art is a visual content of my life. I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil in my hand. From that time I still  like to watch how a line or a form under my hand develops, grows, changes, splits, disappears
and comes again changed.  Not unlike the ever-moving and changing clouds or shadows of trees, which have always always fascinated me. 

Although at first not conscious, the moving element has always been present in my works, from the very beginning. Later I recognised that this was my way and I have developed it farther. The ever moving energy in its many forms has become the main
subject of my art. The streaming cosmic power  forms  the universe and we are just a very small part of it.  The Human being and the involved energy become a very important part of my art. 

My art arises out of an idea as well as an inspiration during the painting process Thoughts, feelings, impulses, motion, dynamic. Both the energy and the spirit, are being included. I am trying to find an optimal synthesis of rationality with feeling, spontaneity with planning. Also the structure, the surface of the art work, are important means. 

The painted energies sometimes discharge into thick convergences and whirlpools of Colors, here and there even into powerful explosions.  Openings and Vistas are attained in the depth of the canvas, into something which appears to lie beyond the visible
Surface. It is an invitation to look there, behind the surface. There are always more possibilities to see something. I like to play with this. A lot is not evident immediately, but should be discovered by the viewers alone.  

The energy often manifests itself in powerful expression, but it can also be subtle. It is spreading in the space, has more dimensions. It has led me to making sculptures, objects and installations. As there is no stop, no borders, also the environment has become  a part of art.

All the works were executed during 2006 and 2007, finished in the spring 2007.

Energy – in general, is the theme of my art. The moving, perpetually changing and diversifying form-taking energy comprises everything. Even we, the human beings, are only a small part of it, easily influenced by anything else.

The large scale art objects of the exhibition installation are visible and working from all directions, outside and inside, the environment being included.

The art is not shown as a static subject, but it is interacting with the surrounding. The nature, trees, people, everything is influencing each other, changing not only the view, but also the thinking process.

The objects are composed of three or four large paintings on canvas, linked together by wooden frames on the ground and on the top ot the objects. Additional wooden parts are attached, illustrating the dynamic steadily streeming energy.

There are large paintings, always a couple of the same size, one of them faced  to the inside of the space, another one to the outside. All the works together are forming their own world, a space of illusion. The outside and inside is being joined organically.

The exhibition took place at Glaspavillon Rheinbach, an exhibition area composed of a unique glass construction. The glass of the pavilion has a similar effect as a mirror. It is reflecting and changing, forming new illusionary options. There are relationships between the objects, between the objects and the paintings, between closed and open space, outside and inside, illussion and reality.

Even a visitor of the exhibition or a spectator looking from outside is joining the relationship and becoming part of the art. A performance according to this idea was included in the exhibition.

http://www.art-master.de/galerie/category/5-flucht-aus-dem-paradies-glaspavillon-rheinbach

Gallery Art Windows, 1110 Vermont Avenue - N.W. Washington  D.C. Virginia, USA, February 2003

Our ways and directions often decide our life. Each of us passes through a labyrinth of many different possibilities. There are many factors and influences coming from every direction. Which is the right way, how to keep our direction? This is the question concerning our life. That is why I have chosen “On the way” as the title of my exhibition.

I am a painter because I have a great need to express myself and/or to comment on the various matters of society. My paintings are a part of my life. They are views into the micro- and macrocosms of our human existence.

I am attempting to achieve an optimal synthesis of all that I know and feel, combining rationality with irrationality, spontaneity with calculated plan.

I use different structure types involving paper, textile and sand on the canvas for giving the impression of light, air and space, which are all important to me. In some of the pictures one can discover human figures. I try to give the viewer a secret spice, so that he or she may find his or her own personal emotional interpretation.

I often combine opposite poles in order to cause dynamic tension. The permanent changing of energy fascinates me. Coming from chaos, I am seeking a superior order involving everything.

.....“A human being, like everything else, is only a small part of freely streaming energy forming the whole universe”..….

Dagmar Dost-Nolden – Painting

Although in the course of the 20^th century the end of painting as an art form was often proclaimed, some artists, even in times of the most radical and revolutionary changes, remained uninfluenced on their own course and continued to paint their works as they saw fit. Today, at the beginning of the 21th century, the many and manifold exhibitions in museums, galleries and art fairs are proving over again that the painted picture has not lost its validity.

Dagmar Dost-Nolden is a painter of inner persuasion and necessity and brings that which she sees, feels and moves into visible forms on the canvas. Her artistic career, which already began in 1960, experienced a change in the 1990`s from an initially figurative and widely accessible art into an expressive, almost even spiritual abstraction.

The works of the last five years, which this catalogue shows through selected examples, make evident on what level of tension the artist is working and what antagonizing forces come into play: the deliberate and the unconscious, the rational and the irrational, spontaneity and the calculated plan, substantial and spiritual reality, nature and human artefacts. Although various abstract concepts play an important role in this process: energy, dynamics, impulse, motion, atmosphere, light and air, the most important ideas for this artist are those of the “human being” and “nature” in all their different facets and ambivalence.

Energies discharge into thick convergences and whirlpools of colors, here and there even into powerful explosions coming from a central point, which however must not necessarily be the formal centres of the composition. In this way openings and vistas are attained into the depth of the canvas, into something which appears to lie beyond the visible surface.

Explosions are uncontrolled motions that the artist manifests by vigorous strokes of the brush. A luminous red, a brilliant yellow, an intensive blue are whirling about the canvas and project beams of light in all directions. The power and the energy that the artist invests into these compositions practically spring over toward the spectator. Often black lines flicker over the surface of the pictures like flashes of lightning (as in “energy1”), they accent the branches and leaves waving in a tree (as in “Symphony of a Tree” and “Secrets of the Underbrush”), or they emphasize the outer and inner movement of a human being (as in the series under the title: ”Call” ).

Dagmar Dost-Nolden works above all with the idea of the “human being”, it is the central point of her interest, because man involves everything in his being that she would like make visible: he moves, he causes changes in himself, he releases energy, and behaves through his emotions and temper. Often that which she wants to show is not immediately evident, because hermotifs are difficult to discover. She demands from her serious viewers that they take a second look at her work and use their powers of imagination for their own creative interpretations. The human figure and its surroundings often conglomerate and achieve unity among diversity. A valid example is the energized “Diptychon”, which, from an apparent tangle of lines and colors, extracts on prolonged viewing the figures of a man and a woman standing antithetically. Each figure emits radiating lines over to the other figure. “The external form is not so important, the same contents could be expressed in an abstract painting. “ opined the artist. This “Diptychon” proves her theory and shows simultaneously how intensively she herself enters into a dialogue with her figures.

Every picture in the artist’s oeuvre arises out of an inspiration during the painting process, through the thoughts, the feelings, and the mood of the moment in which she finds herself. These various criteria direct the development of a motif. She defines for herself much of what she is going to do before setting out, but most of what comes out – often to artist’s own amazement – manifests itself in unexpected forms and colors on the canvas.

Colours are the basis of her painting, they confer the basic emotion in which in which the artist moves. Her colours are, by the way, seldom gloomy, dull or sad. Her palette is the opposite: bright, luminous and positive.

Dagmar Dost-Nolden attributes this to her place of origin, to her way of looking at things that she learned in her native city of Prague. Prague is a city of baroque architecture, gaudy, rich in nuances and flooded with light in every season of the year. The perception of this phenomenon has made its imprint on her consciousness and guides the expressive elements of her work.

Not only the colours, but also the structures of the painting surface are influenced by her earlier experiences in Prague. The pompous baroque style and the decorative art nouveau seen everywhere in the architecture tend toward the dramatic gesture, even in places where the plaster is falling down from the walls and the facades are left to decay. Crumbling walls give clear witness to the strata of their construction and refract the sunlight intensively.

The artist has taken up this phenomenon and transmitted it into the canvas by mixing sand into the acryl or oil paint. In this way she achieves a very tactile surface, into which she engraves certain structures, depending on the thickness of the applied material. By means of

this technique she recreates on the canvas that powerful refraction of light that she was earlier able to observe on the crumbling walls. In some pictures she has added bits of cloth material of various size and thickness into the mixture of colour and sand in order to heighten and intensify these expressive possibilities.

The transparency of light is achieved by a special technique in which she prepares the canvas with a chalk solution before applying paint. The dampness of the preparation absorbs  the paint and disperses the pigments irregularly over the surface. This makes them appear suddenly as light and transparent as aquarelle colours. Dagmar Dost-Nolden derives also this technique from her experience with the architecture of her native city.

When the colours, forms and lines have been brought into a synthesis, the composition of a picture gains balance, harmony and depth, the surface begins to vibrate.

The famous English painter David Hockney once declared: “Painters know about the surface, only if you acknowledge surface, can you go through it.”

Dagmar Dost-Nolden has certainly achieved that in her art.

English translation Robert Thistle