Sobre el Artista

My work today as an artist is based on two sources: Firstly, as a young draftsman I followed an apprenticeship as a ceramic artist with a particular focus on sculpture. After that my interest in art therapy methods led to my training as a practitioner in psychotherapy with a great emphasis on far eastern forms of meditation. The influence of Japanese ink art made for me the "Enso", in the technique of "Hitsuzendo", the central theme. In the Hitsuzendo powerful traces of ink arise from meditation in a dynamic process in synchronization with the body´s exhalation. The Enso (jap.; eng. circle) is a classic symbol of Zen. It represents life and the constant search for unattainable perfection. The only way to perfect life is death; everything alive and everything coming from life is "not perfect." My deep fascination with this theme drives me forward in my Enso work: the Enso demonstrates so perfectly the impossibility of perfektion - every attemt to create the perfect circle develops unavoidably into the eventual release of this idea. From its original context, I freed the Enso and now use it as a medium to interpret existential themes. The concept of the "unachievability of perfection" leads me to the question: How achievable is freedom? www.astrid-hoerr-mann.de