PAINTING IS A POSTURE

Making art is feel the need to communicate.

I communicate through painting because it gives me over the years all

possibilities. The material stimulates me; I love the surface, the colours, the smell and

the gloss of paint- a very traditional point of view.

At the other hand the medium challenge me because after minimalism painting

was declared clinical dead. There was no longer a tradition to fulfil.

Main subject is questioning terms as reality and meaning.

I mostly paint portraits. I work with personal photographs and I select an image. I challenge the viewer by painting recognizable images. At the same time I add intrusive elements to the image in order to entangle. The message is that we are looking at paint on canvas and that our emotions and feelings regarding the depicted models are out of place.

The painting is a lie, a pose, a non-existing reality. The meaning is made by the viewer.

Technological images are all around us. We are trained to absorb a lot of images in a short time. Technological images can be seen as MTV culture. The pace and quantity makes the images un-interpreted. The steady image of a painting forces to indolence. The traditional environment (white wall, house, gallery, museum) insists on contemplation. So, it’s my challenge to use contemporary images such as fashion, advertising, clips and adapted photo’s to paste them together as a steady image.

Like Margritte, Warhol, Richter, Tuymans and Dumas I question the painterly attitude. What interest me is the anti-artistic impulse in painting. The culture of painting before, lets say Duchamp, is a more romantic culture. As if the subject of a painting has to do with it’s content. To see painting as a high quality hand-made work makes any contemporary statement impossible. My paintings are a reaction to the questions that raised when they concluded that painting was dead.

Everything we do is influenced by the period we live in. Painting is a traditional medium. Although I try to make use of all the new technical aspects of this time.

Katinka Lampe, In Ligeia, Renouveau de la peinture, n° 65/66/67/68 “