Meet Katarina Spielmann | Artist/Painter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Katarina Spielmann and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Katarina, why did you pursue a creative career?

I grew up as a child in a small town in Slovakia, which was at that time still part of the Eastern Block (behind the `Iron Curtain `).There was not so much going on and I felt to be born into the wrong place somehow. My parents didn’t have any affiliation to art eather but were supporting. I guess as many other children, I was as well fond of drawing as a child but thinking back then, there was something more into it. It was more like necessity to keep sane.
Actually, I didn`t want to became proffesional artist in the first place at all. I studied International Development before I ended up at the Academy of fine Arts in Vienna, in the painting class led by Daniel Richter.
I would say, art pulled me at some point, because this energy was the entire time around and when I realized that, there was no plan B for me. I went all in.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I moved to Vienna from Slovakia in my early twenties and I didn’t really have a concrete idea about my life at that time. I was enrolled at the university, was busy learning a new language, had various student jobs and mostly enjoyed the life in the new environment. The most of the people that crossed my path were from various creative business and it felt natural to me. Still, at that time, I was not thinking to pursue artistic career. I guess, for a long time, I didn’t feel mature enough or good enough to take it seriously. But once I made the decision, there was no other way around besides the full dedication to art, including the fear of failure, hesitation but most important, the moments of complete fullfilment. My paintings are often about morphing into the tranquility of a space-time vacuum where landscape, vegetation and Homo sapiens converge. Bundles and cords of bulbous shapes often suggest human torsos and bodily limbs. Using lush solid plums, teal and dark earthy greens counter the visible ground of fleshy pinks.
What I am interested in, it is the fragility in life, either the fragility of an individual or the whole society. I use in the paintings metaphors ,symbols suggesting the tipping point between the reality and a sort of drift off into a dreamlike uncanny moment. In the act of painting, it is the movement between figuaration and abstraction, the movement of applying layers and stripping them away, inventing spaces and making inanimate forms and objects to appear vivid.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Eat, drink and hang out: 1. Breakfast at the Breakfast Club in the Schleifmühlgasse owned by a multidisciplinary artist Werner Jakits. He is a legend!
2.Hiroko-san at the Naschmarkt, a little japanese street food place
3.Brasserie Palmenhaus in the Burggarten, beautiful architecture by Otto Wagner
4. Loos Bar, the most legendary Bar in Vienna
5.Cafe Engländer, “allrounder” with timeless style and top service

Art:
Secession
Kunsthistorisches Museum
Mumok
Museum Gugging (ca.30 min. from Vienna)

1 day trip on the river Danube with a catamarane from Vienna to Bratislava (Slovakia)

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I think, everything that we as humans experience, shapes our personality, often without direct feedback. My shoutout goes to:
my kids, through them I learned what unconditional love means
Jasper Sharp from Phileas

among the past ones:
Hannah Arendt
Cormac Mc Carthy
Lee Krasner
Philip Guston
Louise Bourgeois
Helen Frankenthaler
Oscar Wilde
Miles Davis

Website: www.charimgalerie.at

Instagram: @kata_spielmann

Other: google :Katarina Spielmann

Image Credits
Jakob Polacsek,Katarina Spielmann