KATJA NORDMEYER | CRACKS, BEAUTY, AND SOUL

KATJA NORDMEYER | CRACKS, BEAUTY, AND SOUL

Born in 1967 in Hamburg, Katja Nordmeyer lives and works in her hometown. Even as a child, she was enthusiastic about art and painting. Her father was an amateur painter interested in painters like Paul Gauguin and Franz Marc.
Katja Nordmeyer’s career initially took her into the fashion world, but her passion for painting never left her, and she always felt that painting was what she was destined to do. This was followed by studies with the artist Lothar Schulz-Goldap, a student of Prof. Fritz Mackensen, co-founder of the Worpswede Artists’ Association and director of the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen.Thus, Katja has proper training in portrait and landscape painting, which characterizes her early work.
Her interest in people’s emotions led her to take additional training in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) in 2013. In addition, the fascination that the basic emotions such as joy, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and contempt are cross-cultural, according to research by Paul Ekman (an American anthropologist and psychologist), prompts her to paint people of different origins & nationalities, thus showing the connectedness of all people.

She has developed her unique style inspired by Pop Art, with which she creates expressive compositions, preferably portraits. She uses a special putty, applied to perforated aluminum sheeting or canvas for her motifs, and develops cracks of different sizes after some time. These cracks symbolize the transience of the motifs and have relief-like and individual characteristics. The technique is reminiscent of the fresco technique, but the recessed perforated sheets make the works appear even more three-dimensional.
In her paintings, Nordmeyer addresses the transience of beauty, emotions, and moments that live. The chosen motifs and colors, combined with the unusual materials and the unique painting technique, leave a deep impression of passion and emotion on the viewer. She captures the spirit of the times with her impressive and individual art.

“My works are characterized by emotionality and originality, and my style and technique are organic and natural.
I prefer painting on a perforated aluminum plate, using a filler that fractures over time, creating rather spatial and lively-looking compositions. I concern a lot about the transitory things in life as materialism in general but, more importantly, the immaterial like moments, emotions, and feelings.

From blank to covered, empty to full, clean to dirty, fresh to rotten, new to broken to repaired, happy to sad, relaxed to angry, love to hate, young to old – life is defined by transitions; hence everything in life is transitory. Whether these transitions are perceived as positive or negative depends on the observer’s perspective, It’s all relativity. However, I believe that despite all relativity and transitory character of life, it is vital to focus on the here and now, never losing certain values out of sight. This is what my art aims to express.

My recent works, mainly with female appearances, emphasize the importance of equality and the beauty of multiculturalism. Unfortunately, recent national and global events have shown a severe lack of pro-multicultural behavior. I believe that art as a traditional medium, especially in the modern media jungle, is a gateway to symbolize essential values. Respect, equality, multiculturalism, and togetherness fuelled by creativity and passion are the values I and my art stand for.”