Explore the salty waters of the ocean, feel the sunlight on you skin and dance within the infinity of light as Elena Degenhardt invites you to explore her latest online solo exhibition ‘Moments of Being’. Over the next two months, until New Years Eve, visitors to Artsy can embark on an adventure that has been a year long in the making that explores fleeting moments of beauty, fragility and interconnectedness through a breathtaking combination of bodies of water mixed with light and the human form.
Elena Degenhardt is an internationally acclaimed artist, best known for her immersive waterscape paintings in which she explores figurative works and emotionally charged portraits. The classically trained artist is well-regarded for her works in pastel but she also dabbles in other mediums including charcoal, oil, acrylic and other mixed media.
Considering herself a realist with an impressionistic touch, Elena continuously stives to push the boundaries of her chosen mediums and chooses to paint en plein air and from life. Her work has been shown extensive across the globe including in galleries, museums and magazines and she is a signature member of of the Pastel Society of America and Master Pastelist of the International Association of Pastel Societies.
Moments of Being
Exhibition Dates: November 1 – December 31, 2024
Artsy
For more info on the artworks including purchase info please visit 33 Contemporary’s Artsy Page
Press Release //
Elena Degenhardt’s pastels in her solo show titled ‘Moments of Being’ are the artist’s exploration of the ways light changes the usual appearance of our experiences with the things we encounter. She explores how light adds poetry and deeper meaning to the everyday, mundane life, transforming it in what writer Virginia Woolf called “moments-of-being”. Light transcends visual representation, delving into the metaphysical realm of thoughts, physical sensations and ambivalent emotions.
Degenhardt says: “I have spent the past year, immersed in the mesmerising exploration of the interplay of light, water and human form in pastel. I hope these works hold some fleeting moments of acute awareness of beauty, fragility, interconnectedness and of transience of everything.”
I must feel the sea, taste it, breathe it in, carry it within me to be able to work in the studio, no matter if I actually work on a sea-related project or not.
Interview with Elena Degenhardt
Can you tell us about what initially inspired you to create this body of work?
The Mediterranean light. I have lived on two coasts: Mediterranean and the North Sea coast. While the northern light is transparent, the light in the south has an array of colour nuances. It has its own density, like honey or liquid amber. It wraps around things, changing their usual, often mundane, appearance. It adds an incredible sense of depth to everything it touches. It gives you that particular sense of something very special and very fleeting happening this very moment. It is magical.
The name ‘Moments of Being’ comes from the Virginia Woolf book of the same name, did Woolf’s work play a role in the creation of this exhibition?
It did as I have a literary background! Despite having graduated from art school with distinction and a recommendation for further art studies, I went on to do two university degrees in philology and linguistics and had a successful international career in literary research, translation and education for more than a decade before turning to making art professionally in 2017.
I continue to explore some of the themes I did during my work at the university, such as involuntary memory and time, but through visual images. Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf have always been my literary influences. I can very much identify with the way Proust’s narrator in ‘In Search of Lost Time’ takes in the outside world and recollects his childhood memories (that famous episode with the madeleine and lime blossom tea!).
I can deeply resonate with Woolf’s vision of what moments of non being (the majority of our time) and moments of being are (moments of shock, discovery, rapture or awareness of something), as described in her autobiographical essay ‘Sketch of the Past’.
Upon viewing ‘Moments of Being’ I’m immediately drawn to the way you paint water and the relationship it has with light. Did you choose to focus on water because it’s an ideal vessel for exploring light and form or is there another reason?
I almost drowned as a child so my attitude towards the sea had been the one between awe and fear for a long time. Moving to the small island of Malta in 2017 was a turning point both in my relationship with the sea and in my art. I found myself surrounded by the sea so enormous and omnipresent – there was no escape. Instead of enjoying a sunny life at the Mediterranean coast, I became anxious.
While swimming, I would become close to getting a panic attack as soon as the sea became a bit rough, I could no longer feel the seabed or simply watching my young children swim and snorkel. At some point, my deep water anxiety became so disruptive that I had to deal with it.
I began painting waves that both horrified and mesmerised me. I would go out to the shore in storms, make sketches, watch and photograph the giant waves which threatened to overwhelm. Painting them back in the studio, I would feel the fear grow inside of me at first. With every line and hand movement though, with each new wave I painted, I felt my fear slowly dissipate until one day I could actually swim in the open sea again, knowing the waters under my feet were at least five meters deep, and, more over, enjoy it! My first sea-related series ‘Between Awe and Fear’ was born. It has branched out into several series since.
Having overcome my deep water anxiety, I discovered and have been exploring the multi-dimensionality of the sea as a painting subject. Having relocated a lot both in my childhood and as an adult, I can no longer identify with any particular mentality, nationality or place. It feels unsettling at times because a sense of belonging is a human need. In the sea, I have found a place where I regain that sense of belonging to something bigger than myself. Constantly moving and never the same, it has always been here and it is very comforting.
Being in the sea makes me feel like part of the universe: being nothing and everything. Citing Anne Michaels, upon entering the sea, ‘you can no longer tell where your skin begins’. Immersing myself in the ancient sea waters feels like returning to the beginning, to my roots, my true self. The noise of the outside world goes quiet.
My mind goes quiet. I feel peace. At the same time, it is when I am in the sea, focused on my relationship with the water, with my own body and breath, that I become sharply aware of my vulnerability as a human but also of the fragility of the sea itself and of our deep and complex interconnectedness. I also become aware of my resilience, ability to heal and transform and of the healing power of the sea.
Since my family and I moved to the French Mediterranean coast in 2023, I have been swimming all year round, daily. I must feel the sea, taste it, breathe it in, carry it within me to be able to work in the studio, no matter if I actually work on a sea-related project or not.
You’ve spent the past year immersing yourself in exploration of light, water and the human form. In what ways did you immerse yourself during this creative process?
Quite literally, swimming daily, observing, feeling, studying the ways the light moves through the water, bounces off its surface, touches our skin and transforms all shapes, beneath and above the surface. I was taking photographs underwater and on the shore, painting en plein air, on our local beach, a lot, rain or shine, at different times of the day, making many studies back in the studio.
What have been the most rewarding aspects of working on ‘Moments of Being’?
Moments of being are moments consciously and intensely lived. Working on ‘Moments of Being’ made me ponder a lot on what was important in life and what not and perceive everything around and within me even more intensely than I usually do, with all my senses sharp and open.
Human world often feels too noisy, too shallow; it is unfair and full of pain – things I find hard to cope with. Focusing on this project has helped me see some meaning beyond. ‘Moments of Being’ are moments of something real beyond the constructs and machinations of the world.
What have been some of your biggest challenges while working on this project?
Staying focused on the project, on the theme. I always have an overflow of ideas and am easily distracted! Also, to visually describe different moments and yet make them look like a coherent body of work.
What do you hope people can take away with them after viewing ‘Moments of Being’?
I hope these works hold some fleeting moments of acute awareness of beauty, fragility, interconnectedness and of transience of everything and that the people, who will see these works, can sense it and take it away with them. Paraphrasing Virginia Woolf, I hope that these works will make a dint, however small, on them.
Elena Degenhardt Social Media Accounts
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