In these slide shows, Anando Arnold shows his most recent, very large, artwork together with his smaller work called Redux.
Again and again I explore new forms of expression, materials, different formats and motifs in my art. Last year I created these large paintings in oil on canvas – a leap in my artistic work. In the past there were practical considerations how big a painting could be; it had to be easily transportable, i.e. it had to fit in the car. This limited me to a maximum 80 x 100 cm.
Now that I live so close to Berlin, a city with an active art and alternative scene, exhibitions and other cultural events are within easy reach. Also, I was lucky to find a studio one could only dream of. During the DDR times (former East Germany) it was a motorbike factory, situated in a backyard directly in the city centre. The size of the studio is undoubtedly inviting to paint in large formats!
Before I started on my new adventure, I had to make some adjustments because such big canvases do not fit on a normal easel. I screwed brackets into the studio wall and built a small working platform in front of it.
In the beginning the large white area, the still unpainted canvas, was a challenge. I made the first brush strokes, but not “just like that into the blue and then look what happens…!” I did some very conscious pre-planning. Some years ago, I had made small abstract – only postcard-sized – paintings with oil on paper. I took some of these very small paintings as a springboard for the large format, transferring shapes and colours into a completely new dimension.
This series of large paintings is growing in parallel to a series of small black and white paintings on paper. It feels like swaying between two poles, from lush colourfulness in large size to small black and white paintings.
Anando Arnold studied architecture and arts at the Leibnitz University in Hanover. In Pune 2, during the winter months, he taught nude drawing at the Creative Arts of the Multiversity. He lived for 16 years in Ibiza where he was a student of Howard Rogovin and Gretchen Caracas, and was part of the art club Ruta del Arte. In 2006, together with Rani B. Knobel, also an artist, he moved to Bad Belzig, not too far from his native Berlin. anando.de
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