Imi Knoebel

My first tutorial of the year was with Mike Collier, we spoke about the similarities between my ideas and his own work and maybe using more pastels in my work for the vivid colours.

He suggested some very interesting artists to me including Ruth Root, Gillian Ayres, Derek Roberts and Imi Knoebel. After a short period of investigating these artists I was struck by the beautiful bright colours and interesting cut outs of Knoebel's work.

Whilst favouring flatness over depth his colourful cut outs and block coloured paintings are very striking to look at, Ive picked a few of my favourites to show below.

The first is 'OOMMMM 120' (2002) acrylic and aluminium, until now I had never been interested in collages or layering shapes as I thought it was too cluttered but whilst progressing throughout my studies I have found this is a great way to create depth in an image whilst keeping the flat colours and shapes.

I really love how the colours interact with each other, the lines of the grid guide the eye to view the piece as a whole and not just focused on one particular place. It made me realise that my intent throughout my paintings is to have more than one focal point, I like a lot of aspects to consider in my work.

The next painting is my favourite from his whole collectives, created in 2008 'Gartenbild II' (below) is also made from acrylic and aluminium, although the image appears very flat, the fact you can see the brushstrokes and the layering of the strange shapes gives a lot of depth. almost like you could step into one of the blank spaces.

This has encouraged me to use looser shapes instead of precise geometric blocks and triangles, the colours work very well together although If I were to mix colours like I have been doing It has been suggested I work on my colour palette. Working with very prominent brush strokes is also something new to me as my work has always been very flat block colours; exploring into the work of Knoebel has encouraged me to be a lot more fluid with my paints and even mixing in other colours to reveal light and dark areas of the shapes.

I would love to see one of these pieces up close to experience the vivid colours in person.