Henriette Busch Interview
Profile
Biography
Gallery
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Copyright of interview belongs to Ovenden
Contemporary (Art Promotions) Limited. Any
un-authorised use is strictly prohibited. All
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(c) 2008 Ovenden Contemporary (Art Promotions)
Limited
Henriette Busch talks about objectivity,
travelling and the influence of her Artist
father...
OC: Your father was the anglo-german artist Eddy Smith. Was your upbringing affected by his profession in any way?
HB: My father died when I was very young, and I never got to know him really, except through stories from my mother. I remember mainly visiting him in hospital with my mother, where he was for long periods of time. Those visits were always depressing, and the hospital smelled horrible, like ether. But I do remember him painting, and being surrounded by his work - drawings, portraits, landscapes, sketches.
OC: What sort of time period was this?
HB: That was in the fifties, but my father was 30 years older than my mother, so when she met him, in 1949, he had already done most of the work that he became known for. To put him into a historical context, he was a contemporary and friend of the German artist Georg Grosz in the 1920's. My father has also illustrated many books with engravings, etchings and drawings - I have some of these books but many more are to be found on German websites which specialise in old and out-of-print books.
OC: So what were his influences on you?
HB: I drew & doodled a lot from a very young age, but my upbringing was not influenced directly by his profession - maybe it would have been, had we stayed in Berlin, but my mother remarried 5 years after my father died, and together we moved to Liberia, West Africa, where I went to an American-type High School. Art did not figure on the curriculum at all and anyway, at that time, I had no interest in it, there were too many other exciting things on the agenda. In fact, for a long time, drawing or being otherwise creative didn't play a role in my life. But I absorbed my surroundings, I think, without realising it - the strong colors, the sounds, sights and smells. All this would resurface in my art many years later.
OC: What brought you back?
HB: When I got married, we moved to live in Suriname, South America and I suddenly wanted to do creative "things", and signed up at the Academy of Fine Art for a whole array of evening courses - sculpture, painting, drawing and pottery. I really enjoyed all these different courses, and through that, also became re-interested in my fathers work, and had some of his drawings, paintings and etchings that were left to me, framed and hung on walls. But due to my husbands work, we moved around a lot, to different countries, so it was not the right time to make plans for myself.
OC: Postponed again? That must have been frustrating. Was it during this time that you started promoting your father's achievements?
HB: Yes, well, many years later, I decided I wanted to do something for the father I never really knew, and together with my mother, explored ways to go about this. We found a gallery in Berlin which did retrospectives of dead artists, and amazingly, the gallery owner actually had heard of my father, even though he had been dead for 40+ years! He was very interested in putting together a show, so together with the work that I had from him, and the work that the gallery owner found at various archives and through networking and contacting friends, we had a sizeable collection in the end and had a very successful exhibition of his work in March 2001, at the "Galerie Taube" in Berlin. Apparently there were quite a few people who knew my fathers' work as he was, at his time in Berlin, one of the few people to still do the "lost art" of copper etching, so his etchings were quite rare and had become collector's items. All this I never knew, until the gallery owner enlightened me!
OC: Did this make a 'Curator' of you?
HB: No, not really! That was really the work of the gallery owner, he was an incredibly knowledgeable man, an expert, I would say, about the history of painting and in particular, the time period that my father did most of his work in, which was in the period leading up to the 2nd World War. He came to my house in St. Albans and together, we went through all the work that I had from my father. I remember he was quite appalled to see the state that some of these prints, etchings and drawings were in...Of course, they had been in a portfolio, but that itself was quite ancient and I had carried this around with me over the years, from one continent to another, through different climate zones, some of them with high humidity and heat - probably not the best way to preserve valuable work like this. Luckily, the only real damage was around the edges and we were able to hide that under the mounts. But I certainly learnt a lot from him, not only about what not to do, but also why one particular series of work was more important than another.
OC: Are you able to put those kinds of 'value judgements' on the work that you are producing now?
HB: I hope so. It must be one of the hardest things to do, to be objective about your own work. But one of my tutors from the Uni once said we mustn't be "precious" about our work, and he was so right. It took me a while but I think I have learned a lot in that respect, to be able to take a more distanced view. In fact, very often when I am painting and I like some aspect of the painting a lot, I deliberately destroy it (eventually) because I know that that first feeling is wrong, that it's too subjective, and that I have to wait till that feeling passes and I am able to be more unemotional about it.
OC: That sounds like a very difficult thing to do?
HB: Yes, it's difficult sometimes, to paint over a bit that I really like, but I am sure it helps me in the end to be more objective about my work.
OC: What does objectivity bring to your work?
HB: It's a learning process, as I said. Because you are always torn between subjectivity and objectivity. I think the pictures that work best are those where I have started with an image, thought or memory of something or someplace which meant something to me. And I want that meaning to come across to the viewer, that's my criteria. Of course the same meaning won't necessarily come across, but as long as the viewer can sense that there WAS a meaning, that's the main thing.
OC: Is it always your intention to convey a meaning?
HB: No, there are those pictures which are created "accidentally", through adding layers and taking away, continuing that process until something emerges which is acceptable to me.
OC: Is it acceptable if it has no particular meaning or purpose?
HB: Well, maybe just something about the combination of marks, colors, the overall synergy of the piece which works as a whole. The tricky thing is to know when that point has been reached.
OC: ..And to be objective about it, to not overpaint a piece once you have reached that synergy? It seems to me that it is all about timing with you? Knowing when to stop and when to keep going and when to step back from something. But what about the meaning? What is your message?
HB: I don't always have a message! But when I do, and this is mainly in my landscape work, I want to convey to the viewer the feeling I had when I first saw the landscape or the place that inspired me. Whether it was the atmosphere, or the colours, or the sheer beauty of the fields on that day -they leave their mark in my memory and when I try to recreate that feeling in a painting or in a digital image (often using bits of other paintings in that process) I often exaggerate the intensity of the colours in order to re-create that intensity that I felt on that day. And it's great when people who see my work can get that message, too.
OC: What about your abstract work? Is there an emotion or a message informing that work?
HB: My abstract work usually is the result of many, many layers - overpainting, scratching away, adding new lines, forms and/or paint or sometimes obliterating the whole painting and starting all over again on the canvas to repeat the above process. What I am looking for in my abstract work is that I reach a point where something in the painting surprises and excites me.That doesn't mean it's finished, because the part that surprises or excites me, may just be a small part of the painting. I then have to try and make the other parts match that, or at least, not take away from the exciting part.
What I like about this process is that you can get totally unexpected results and that's what I mean by surprising, because you can't plan for it, it just happens unexpectedly - or not, of course. When it doesn't happen at all, then the painting didn't work. If it does happen, and I still feel excited when I look at it days or weeks later, then I leave it and don't do anymore to it. So, in answer to your question, no, there isn't an intended message in my abstract paintings, although there may be an emotion, I don't really know. It could just be a case of- as some famous person once said, but I can't remember which famous person- "the image is the image - no more, and no less."
OC: Your father was the anglo-german artist Eddy Smith. Was your upbringing affected by his profession in any way?
HB: My father died when I was very young, and I never got to know him really, except through stories from my mother. I remember mainly visiting him in hospital with my mother, where he was for long periods of time. Those visits were always depressing, and the hospital smelled horrible, like ether. But I do remember him painting, and being surrounded by his work - drawings, portraits, landscapes, sketches.
OC: What sort of time period was this?
HB: That was in the fifties, but my father was 30 years older than my mother, so when she met him, in 1949, he had already done most of the work that he became known for. To put him into a historical context, he was a contemporary and friend of the German artist Georg Grosz in the 1920's. My father has also illustrated many books with engravings, etchings and drawings - I have some of these books but many more are to be found on German websites which specialise in old and out-of-print books.
OC: So what were his influences on you?
HB: I drew & doodled a lot from a very young age, but my upbringing was not influenced directly by his profession - maybe it would have been, had we stayed in Berlin, but my mother remarried 5 years after my father died, and together we moved to Liberia, West Africa, where I went to an American-type High School. Art did not figure on the curriculum at all and anyway, at that time, I had no interest in it, there were too many other exciting things on the agenda. In fact, for a long time, drawing or being otherwise creative didn't play a role in my life. But I absorbed my surroundings, I think, without realising it - the strong colors, the sounds, sights and smells. All this would resurface in my art many years later.
OC: What brought you back?
HB: When I got married, we moved to live in Suriname, South America and I suddenly wanted to do creative "things", and signed up at the Academy of Fine Art for a whole array of evening courses - sculpture, painting, drawing and pottery. I really enjoyed all these different courses, and through that, also became re-interested in my fathers work, and had some of his drawings, paintings and etchings that were left to me, framed and hung on walls. But due to my husbands work, we moved around a lot, to different countries, so it was not the right time to make plans for myself.
OC: Postponed again? That must have been frustrating. Was it during this time that you started promoting your father's achievements?
HB: Yes, well, many years later, I decided I wanted to do something for the father I never really knew, and together with my mother, explored ways to go about this. We found a gallery in Berlin which did retrospectives of dead artists, and amazingly, the gallery owner actually had heard of my father, even though he had been dead for 40+ years! He was very interested in putting together a show, so together with the work that I had from him, and the work that the gallery owner found at various archives and through networking and contacting friends, we had a sizeable collection in the end and had a very successful exhibition of his work in March 2001, at the "Galerie Taube" in Berlin. Apparently there were quite a few people who knew my fathers' work as he was, at his time in Berlin, one of the few people to still do the "lost art" of copper etching, so his etchings were quite rare and had become collector's items. All this I never knew, until the gallery owner enlightened me!
OC: Did this make a 'Curator' of you?
HB: No, not really! That was really the work of the gallery owner, he was an incredibly knowledgeable man, an expert, I would say, about the history of painting and in particular, the time period that my father did most of his work in, which was in the period leading up to the 2nd World War. He came to my house in St. Albans and together, we went through all the work that I had from my father. I remember he was quite appalled to see the state that some of these prints, etchings and drawings were in...Of course, they had been in a portfolio, but that itself was quite ancient and I had carried this around with me over the years, from one continent to another, through different climate zones, some of them with high humidity and heat - probably not the best way to preserve valuable work like this. Luckily, the only real damage was around the edges and we were able to hide that under the mounts. But I certainly learnt a lot from him, not only about what not to do, but also why one particular series of work was more important than another.
OC: Are you able to put those kinds of 'value judgements' on the work that you are producing now?
HB: I hope so. It must be one of the hardest things to do, to be objective about your own work. But one of my tutors from the Uni once said we mustn't be "precious" about our work, and he was so right. It took me a while but I think I have learned a lot in that respect, to be able to take a more distanced view. In fact, very often when I am painting and I like some aspect of the painting a lot, I deliberately destroy it (eventually) because I know that that first feeling is wrong, that it's too subjective, and that I have to wait till that feeling passes and I am able to be more unemotional about it.
OC: That sounds like a very difficult thing to do?
HB: Yes, it's difficult sometimes, to paint over a bit that I really like, but I am sure it helps me in the end to be more objective about my work.
OC: What does objectivity bring to your work?
HB: It's a learning process, as I said. Because you are always torn between subjectivity and objectivity. I think the pictures that work best are those where I have started with an image, thought or memory of something or someplace which meant something to me. And I want that meaning to come across to the viewer, that's my criteria. Of course the same meaning won't necessarily come across, but as long as the viewer can sense that there WAS a meaning, that's the main thing.
OC: Is it always your intention to convey a meaning?
HB: No, there are those pictures which are created "accidentally", through adding layers and taking away, continuing that process until something emerges which is acceptable to me.
OC: Is it acceptable if it has no particular meaning or purpose?
HB: Well, maybe just something about the combination of marks, colors, the overall synergy of the piece which works as a whole. The tricky thing is to know when that point has been reached.
OC: ..And to be objective about it, to not overpaint a piece once you have reached that synergy? It seems to me that it is all about timing with you? Knowing when to stop and when to keep going and when to step back from something. But what about the meaning? What is your message?
HB: I don't always have a message! But when I do, and this is mainly in my landscape work, I want to convey to the viewer the feeling I had when I first saw the landscape or the place that inspired me. Whether it was the atmosphere, or the colours, or the sheer beauty of the fields on that day -they leave their mark in my memory and when I try to recreate that feeling in a painting or in a digital image (often using bits of other paintings in that process) I often exaggerate the intensity of the colours in order to re-create that intensity that I felt on that day. And it's great when people who see my work can get that message, too.
OC: What about your abstract work? Is there an emotion or a message informing that work?
HB: My abstract work usually is the result of many, many layers - overpainting, scratching away, adding new lines, forms and/or paint or sometimes obliterating the whole painting and starting all over again on the canvas to repeat the above process. What I am looking for in my abstract work is that I reach a point where something in the painting surprises and excites me.That doesn't mean it's finished, because the part that surprises or excites me, may just be a small part of the painting. I then have to try and make the other parts match that, or at least, not take away from the exciting part.
What I like about this process is that you can get totally unexpected results and that's what I mean by surprising, because you can't plan for it, it just happens unexpectedly - or not, of course. When it doesn't happen at all, then the painting didn't work. If it does happen, and I still feel excited when I look at it days or weeks later, then I leave it and don't do anymore to it. So, in answer to your question, no, there isn't an intended message in my abstract paintings, although there may be an emotion, I don't really know. It could just be a case of- as some famous person once said, but I can't remember which famous person- "the image is the image - no more, and no less."