edited by Jordan Baker, Journalist New York 

Stephanie Bing: Award Winner STILL LIFE COMPETITION 2022, December 

ARTREPRENEUR the leading global Art online platform

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USA and Worldwide Competition, Winner

Artwork: „The big YELLOW. Still life with fruit and Arne Jakobsens Egg-Chair“, painting

 

Stephanie Bing 

Contemporary Artist

 

How did you get started as an artist?

I have been a working artist for more than 30 years. When I was young, I tied flowers together and arranged them in different vases in an attempt to play with composition. When I was fourteen, I learned the principles of the Japanese art of floral arranging: Ikebana. That taught me a fresh and creative approach to movement, balance and harmony with the elements of line, color and mass. 

I grew up in a house that was supportive of the arts. My mother was passionate about pottery, and I participated in many craft exhibitions with her. My dad is also a talented painter with hints of abstract expressionism in his youth and later realistic approaches in oil paintings. 

At the age of 16, I started painting in watercolours: landscapes, still lifes and seascapes.

Subsequently, I studied fine arts, painting, photography, art history, German, and literature at University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz, Germany. These professional qualifications gave me access to all creative techniques and provided me with a global art historical background.

I started my painting career with strong references to abstract expressionism and reduced myself to almost monochrome, gestural signs in both formal language and colour repertoire. I stopped painting in 2002 and traveled around the world for 10 years to gather more inspiration.

When my beloved mum died, it was a life-changing event that prompted me to start painting again. 

My style changed completely, as did my technique: I created environments and furnished imaginary rooms on canvas by creating new, unexpected, magical interiors which I interpret to be sanctuaries. This is the path that led me to develop my current style.

 

What kind of experience do you have that inspires you to create a new painting?

I start painting without an outside trigger of inspiration. The painting’s process itself is of the utmost importance in my daily life. Painting is comparable to breathing for me. I like to plunge into my painting process like others plunge into a pool. Creating a new painting is an effort in balance between visualizing and reflecting on my surroundings and emotions. The subjects of my work reflect a myriad of daily impressions from traveling around the world and being in motion. While painting, I get an extraordinary sense of personal and creative freedom.

 

Sometimes you break down the picture plane in your work- either with a flat background, or with collage elements.  What do you hope to achieve with this effect?

I want to give my audience the opportunity to look behind the basic, well known pictorial sphere by leaving behind the classically taught composition and inventing more layers within the two-dimensional canvas. Sometimes I enlarge the interior space through perspective illusions, and I also add collage elements, which I collect every day, for additional connotation. I love to break the traditional methods of spatial visualization and the physical three-dimensional illusions of room in order to make the viewer's perception of reality kind of absurd. Only by breaking the classical view I can generate a new experience for my audience, pointing them to an emotional reality.

 

Your work has such beautiful and vibrant colors, as well as tropical birds.  How do you make the decision to work with imagination versus more realistically?  

As a graduate of the academy of arts I am pretty much familiar with the theoretical background of symbols, meanings, metaphors and equivocations of art interpretation. It’s very fun for me to put these icons like vocabulary into my art to create a sophisticated composition that tells hidden stories.

In my still lifes you will find a goldfinch, a fly, fruits, fish, design furniture and the offensive use of complementary colours. On a superficial view, one might say, well, a colorful composition featuring some decorative stylistic elements, such as this little bird in the upper right of the image.  On a closer inspection it opens up to a more profound interpretation: The goldfinch bird is a symbol of perseverance, fertility and persistence.  In Christian iconography it also represents a symbol of the passion of Jesus Christ.  So it is not just a decorative tropical bird.  My pictorial elements always have symbolism. I combine the bird and modern nordic furniture (design by Norwegian Arne Jacobsen who has made history with his famous Egg Chair design) and infuse these elements with the very shiny and dominant color yellow. In addition, I’ve included a rich fruit still life for a well-balanced composition, and a view of a hidden room in the middle of the picture which illustrates another plane of existence and suggests an emotional or psychological perspective.

The decision to combine these elements within my picture composition arises each time anew, because the plain image or the pure abstract composition is not enough for me. I build a new environment, which relates to nothing seen before. I want my pure aesthetic energy to flow out of my composition to brighten the viewer's mind with pure buzz and delightful excitement.

I don’t expect this specific background knowledge from my audience, and for this reason I offer comments on my pictures and give insights into composition and meaning. 

 

What do you hope your audience takes away from your paintings?

I would like my art rooms to attract the audience to take a breath for a minute, slow down, and to have an interaction with the painting.  Depending on the art’s content this could mean to smile, get a boost of emotions, a sensation from color, to remember a personal story or accept my story and be filled with delightfully fresh vibes into their day, and into their lives. 

 

What is your method for navigating creative block? 

That’s a very funny question for me. It is like asking me how I would survive without breathing. 

Thank God I don't know anything about a creative block. If that happens, I'm probably dead.

 

Thank you so much, and congratulations again!  Your work is beautiful, and I'm sure our readers will enjoy hearing about your work and your process.

 

Sincerely,

Jordan Baker, 

511 6th Ave, Unit 934, New York, NY 10011