Silke Kowalski

About my own work

Standing at the beginning again and again, looking with the eyes of a child at reality and truth, beyond which I see "das Überwirkliche" (super-real). Sometimes I work with ashes and earth, stone and paint, tulle gauze and clay, sometimes I reach for beads, or a button. Occasionally objects were created, like The Silent Lute; there was performance art (Scooping water with a fork). But drawing and painting are, and will always be, in the centre of my work. Independent of the choice of material, my main emphasis lies on the immediate and direct. For many years I have admired the angular creations of Barlach, I still do. The compact, heavy drawings of the 80s bear testimony to that. The expressions of the hands were and are important for me. In those times I drew them sensitive, each finger had to be just so. Today hands are symbols of helplessness, reaching out into emptiness, grasping for hold, signalling. Brusque and rough, these hands do not want to be ignored. Some figures are like wings or flowers, others protective like shields. Angels, strangely earthly, all too human birds, and childhood visions bring about the releasing lightness, without which every ship of life would sink. The figure's motions and postures are as old as humanity itself.