Winnie SeifertClueless

Winnie Seifert paints her mostly large-format works in oil; her paintings speak of a seemingly untamed dynamism, above all due to their polychromy: on the blank canvas, large areas of colour alternate with fine brushstrokes, overlap or peek out from the depths as a signal behind another surface. The canvas always appears to be in motion - her paintings rarely stand still. This may be due to the primarily abstract effect of her painting style, but also - and this becomes apparent at second glance - to the associative narration of her works. She does not paint landscapes or scenes and yet moments, ideas and moods develop on the picture support that ultimately do have a setting. She therefore concentrates neither on pictorial composition nor on formality; it is the colours, in their use and combination, that interest her. Winnie Seifert therefore does not begin with the form that is generated with colour, but conversely, colour is her artistic starting point, which opens up the narrative scope of what she sees.

The basic idea of starting with colour is a bold one, as there is no prescribed structure or preliminary drawing. Winnie Seifert goes straight to the canvas - with only a vague direction in mind. What the picture will ultimately look like is also open to her. It is a strange connection between intuition and devotion, vague conjecture and spontaneity that is at work in the creative process. However, this is not action painting that is subject to chance; her works never remain completely abstract, but open up scope for association and supposed pictorial worlds - for the artist and the recipients alike. The predominant blue then becomes an imagined piece of water, a striking yellow on a dark background could represent a source of light. We are never certain of the final form, but we don't need to be: Winnie Seifert paints moods that can never be described as absolute, but which we all somehow recognise. The colour is left to create the space of the picture. Initially lost in the abstraction of colour, narratives can now be found in her combinations and thus convey her special mood. Mood, the title of the exhibition says it all: Winnie Seifert's works are mood paintings - created from intuition and expression.