"Confronted with Elin Neumanns paintings, the impression is – as when confronted by
the works of the english painter Joseph M. William Turner – that beyond the familiar nature, there is something unknown and greater, that you can only reach by way of the painting, and by turning the eye inward."
(Quotation by Master of Art. M.A. Jens Frederik Hansen)

Biography about the painter Elin Neumann from the book "Art and the Artist" 3.
Published by Aarhus Arthouse and The Artists Society, Aarhus

The painting´s anatomy
by Torben Thuesen

Rainclouds wander across the sky and leave a curtain of rain behind and under them as they journey over the greygreen sea. Rainclouds leave a rainbow on the horizon and rain drops on the crimson pettles of the wild roses. I sit and talk with artist Elin Neumann about her paintings which, since 1995, have had their origins in landscapes and nature. A titel like „Incidents By Water" could as well be a common denominator for her work after 1995, when she decided to leave the city of Aarhus and settle at Dyngby Strand. But as she says: There were other paintings in need of expression then.

Landscape and nature
Her answer to my question of whether or not her paintings are landscapes, is both yes and no.
Nature and landscape are points of departure for my paintings, Elin Neumann explains, but instead of creating a perceived landscape on the canvas, I try to recreate or rather express its essence. By essence, Elin doesn´t mean any particular landscape or nature´s specific character, but mainly the formal forms of expression and challenges landscapes and nature provide. An example is her choice of color, her technic and use of earth colors applied in several thin, translucent layers. This gives her paintings a characteristical raw but, simultaneously, esthetic appearance.
This method demands constant work, returning again and again, requiring untiring attention over a longer period of time. Paint is applied to the canvas and scraped off again, and through this continuous process a picture of time, a story and a unique identity emerges. Elin explains further: It´s a painting process that has come about naturally over a longer period, and the canvas at last obtains the kind of surface, like the walls in Pompei exposed to rain, wind, sun – and time.

The place
Refering to Pompei, you will get the feeling that travelling means a great deal, as both inspiration and model, for Elin Neumann´s work. She says that, besides traveling, other artists´ work have also been of importance to her; but mostly the area of tidal meadows south of Aarhus, perform as catalyst for her paintings.
From Elin´s beach house, she can follow the changes in the sea and sky. Elin Neumann says: Each and every second presents new colors and movement, and are an endless and timeless source of inspiration. The idea of timelessness has always fascintated me, as does the view from the beach house of the islands Tunoe and Samsoe barely visible in the mist.
The shore, the meadows, the colors of the marshes, the flat fields, elongated gazes down the coast, old buildings, fragmented houses, distant islands˜all this, as Elin says, gives a picture of time here and now˜fossils, shells, sand and rock also give us reminders of things far away and of time unending.

Inspiration and form
Beside the sea, as we talk, Elin names the artists Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), John Constable (1776-1837), Mark Rothko (1903-1973) and Per Kirkeby (1938-) as sources of inspiration.
The influence of Turner, Constable and Rothko, are obvious but require a thorough explanation: Elin´s paintings are sometimes mistaken as New Age, but actually they have nothing in common.
Per Kirkeby´s method of work can be an adequate approach to understanding Elin Neumann´s paintings.
First the canvas is covered, completely, by color. Thereafter, his method of approach is a sort of departure from various themes, often motives from nature, perhaps derived from his work as geologist. But he paints the resemblance away, and what is left is a kind of memory, where nature´s spaciousness and structure starkly remain.
Per Kirkeby´s approach to painting may be considered academic. The same can be said of Elin Neumann´s work. She says: My paintings are not spiritual, I don´t paint feelings, but rather tangible objects, filtered through the continual creative process on the canvas. Occupied with formal things concerning the painting, and the creative process itself, as Elin Neumann´s work proceeds, a form for search can be observed, a search into the formal processes of painting or, in other words: The painting´s anatomy. When Turner was commissioned to do a painting in 1815 of the famous battle at Waterloo, he chose a very unconventional solution.
Instead of painting a picture that complied to the accepted traditions of the genre – depicting the heroics of soldiers and generals, according the the ideals of the time – celebrating victory and the victors, Turner, on the other hand, chose to paint the down trodden, bloody, sodden and muddied battlefield where wailing widows and grave robbers sought after the last remains of life and valor. Turner chose to paint historically correct, but included a certain atmosphere with the help of color placement and treatment of the painting´s surface.
Elin Neumann´s paintings bear, as do Turner´s, the same truth-seeking evidence. Both probe into the motive´s and into the painting´s formal effects, the tactile, the surface treatment and an atmosphere of wholeness. The „historical" dimension is, on the contrary, less important to Elin. It´s the formal aspect that holds her interest. As for the choice and adaptation of a motive, Constable has had a greater influence on Elin Neumann, particularly his way of dealing simultaneously with a micro-macrocosm, soberly representing surprisingly everyday things. Rothko´s influence is seen especially in the way Elin works with different horizons and divisions in her composition, characteristic of Rothko´s work after 1955. Beside the horizons and divisions, as focus (horizon) and vanishing points (four picture parts), Rothko´s use of archetypical color has also influenced Elin´s own color attitudes. In Elin Neumann´s „Terra" 2003, the formal effects inspired by the above mentioned artists, reach a higher level as an artistic whole a beautiful union of the tactile, the near and distant in the motive, the color surfaces and positions of expression.

"Terra" 2003 50 x 50 cm .....................Photo: Lars Gundersen

The Journeys
A landscape-inspired approach hasn´t always engaged Elin, she says: This place at the seaside naturally insisted on other paintings than did Aarhus, but it also coincided with my desire just before moving, to work with painting and color.

Before moving to Dyngby Strand, she often worked in black and white, derived from the graphical processes and technics she worked with at the Aarhus Art Academy and Hans Ludvig Larsen. Drawing, too, with Knud Hegnet Larsen earlier at Kolding School of the Arts and Crafts, has had a major impact on her appreciation of form and material. As J.W. Goethe once said: „Light is shadow´s lover, form is their child."

Though Elin Neumann worked with graphics until 1992, shades as also found in Rembrandt´s graphical art reminiscent of the quality of color, appeared. Elin explains that working with painting and color, as she began with in 1990, seemed a natural continuation of the exploration that occupied her. The motives, figures and the city altered, of course, with her move til Dyngby Strand and after her trip to the North Cape.

The trip to the North Cape meant a lot to Elin, her monoprint series „Red Memory" from 1995 a series of interim pictures give the impression of the change she was experiencing.
After that, work done primarily in black and white, for instance „Outside the City" 1997, represent a decisive bridge from the graphic to painterly.

"Outside the City" 1997 ..100 x 100 cm........Photo: Lars Gundersen

Travelling, often longer trips, is important. Destinations have been numerous, but trips to Italy reoccurring. On travelling, Elin Neumann says: Not much painting is done during the trip, but mostly the gathering of impressions and frames of mind, of photographs, sketches, the bare fact of being there. During a stay in Italy, at Sculpturer Joergen Haugen Sørensen´s home „Villa Simi", a house Elin visited several times throughout 1992-2001, she discovered, by roaming the historical landscape of Tuscany, what she calls: the spirit of the place.
The paintings, accomplished quickly on returning home, thus comprise a sort of archetype for later paintings, for example „Riva I" 2003, where the spirit of the place has been moved some 1000 km north.

"Riva" 2003 (70 x 70 cm) ... ....................Photo: Lars Gundersen

Torben Thuesen, born 1960
Art Historian
Formerly Museums Direktor at Herning Art Museum and
Artistic Leader at Ellekilde Auktionshus, Copenhagen.
Independent Consultant since 2001


Translation by Joyce Grosswiler