Nicola Barth, born 1966 in Mölln lives and works today near Frankfurt am Main. She completed her master degree in German language and literature, theatre, film and television studies and psychologie at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.
She always thougt about writing books, but soon she put her pen out of he hand and picked up a brush to find new forms of expression. Words were no longer sufficient to describe what she was dealing with: permanent metamorphic processes in non-obvious areas. On other levels we need other languages. Her paintings can be understood as a short visual light that gives insight into a temporally ans spatially limited section of a development process. Movements remain as frozen in a gesture without beein still.
Painting and drawing mainly in graphite and oil are complemented by tree-dimensional works and digitally manipulated photograhy. The contend follows the same principle and is as abstract and surreal as her paintings.
She regularly attends courses at art academies, among others at Peter Casagrande, Alfred Darda, Johann Nußbächer, Lynn Schoene und Peter Tomschicek and her works
Were shown for example at the Hessische Landeskunstausstellung in Marburg, the Museum Modern Art in Hünfeld, Museum Theo Kerg and others.
She was nominated for the Heise Kunstpreis, artig Kunstpreis, Kitz-Award, Palm Art Award ,
Blooom Art Award.
She herselfs says about her work:
When everything is loose and in constant movement, everything reacts with everything else,
everything finds itself constantly in a process,
there is nothing really finished,
and when time and space are only fixed ideas,
then deception and change
are confusion and chance
It remains to stopp an d make visible.
My analog answer to this is painting/ making art.
Does your art carry a message? - out of an interview for Artsfemin exhibition is Gstaad 2020
„There is actually a world behind this world. As a philosoph without words i try milkglass permeabiliy“ – Nicola Barth
I had so far no great interest in decipting an image of reality, even if sometimes figurativness is to be recognized to some extend – but this happens always coincidentally , never wanted.
I think my paintings cannot be unterstood with the mind. Sometimes i make sculptures or work with fotografie, it´s the same thing. This can´t even work, because I´m concerned with what´s behind the obvious: Intermediate and transitional worlds, morphing, shape change, processes in change. There is a simulaneous existence of things around us - there is something that shows itself and disappears again. Absence and presence.
The opposite, the ambivalence, the penetration the state in between I´m interested in. There is my focus and this ist what I am painting – or sculpting, or trying to show with my Fotos. Wheter this is well implemented on my part must be decided by others. I can only try and offer an idea as an answer, which has no claim to the truth or perfection.
What inspires you ?
Nearly everything and everyone.
Conversations, books, nature, special materials, rooms and spaces. For me the more important question ist: unter what conditions are we ready for inspiration?
In my experience, inspiration always comes spontaneously an unexpectedly. Often when I am doing quite profane everyday work. I think you need to be just opened and relaxed when you are searching for inspiration, i call it to be „on air in off space“. Inspiration itself can´t be forced, but the circumstanced under which inspiration takes place can be influenced. There are certain synapses in the brain have to be interconnected with each other and this is an involuntary process. It is always about input and output and the indivual „in-between“ that manifests itself in an artistic result. To my mind an image or a scupture or even music is a living organism that grows out of itself.
How do you self improve your work?
By walking the world with my eyes and ears open for inspiration.
Maybe it´s a bit like this: The artist has the ability to wander the world without loosing the connection to reality and he can bring something from „there“.
However this from „there“ is subject to different laws evaluation criteria. As a painter I have not set myself the task to paint beautiful and real pictures. But they should be authentic and unperturbed. This is my claim.
So I have to ask myself : Is my work/painting authentic? Present? Strong enough? Unflinching? Is it consistent? Does it speak it´s own language? Is it alive?