Interview with Gosia Machon
February 2019
1. How important is language within your work?
My work is a visual language without words, the painting communicates in it’s own and ambivalent way. In the moment of creation, during the process, spoken or written language does not have any influence. I don’t even think consciously while I’m painting.
Later I give my works titles, but I change them often as I look at them again. A title should be ambiguous and poetic but the german language is very rigid. The changing of titles is not a concept. Each time I look at my works, different aspects come up, so it feels more like a personal update, that keeps the word-image-relation vivid and dynamic.
2. What are you currently working on?
My last paintings show sceneries in wilderness, often in the night. The figures are swooned or lost in and by the power of nature. „Nature“ can be a forest, but also our subconscious or our body. We only have ostensible control over our life and our surrounding (which is tragic and absurd at the same time). That’s the subject of my paintings since many years.
Right now I am working money-jobs and waiting for the emerging of a next body of work in my studio. New subjects come with improvising and not with conceptual thinking. So I don’t know yet what will come next.
3. Do you listen to music while working?
I used to hear music while I was painting, but it changed. Music has too much influence. Since I have children silence is something very valuable!
4. Which artists (or other people) are you inspired by?
I think I get the most inspiration from ethnological, popular folk traditions, ancient pieces of art and culture and so-called outsider artists. I am attracted to the pure, honest, essential and fundamental, something far away from cultural regulations.
Good art (in my opinion) must have a sound, it can be melodic or disturbing, quiet or loud, but you must feel soul or punk inside.
5. What is your favourite place to see art?
When I was a child my uncle (a painter himself) took me to the „Staatsgalerie“ in Stuttgart, the biggest museum for art close to where I grown up. My uncle was able to tell me thrilling stories about almost all of the paintings or painters. It was the beginning of my love for art. Visiting a (good) museum is still something festive and solemn. But I could spend also hours and weeks in a library.
6. What is the best part of being an artist?
The freedom of doing what I want.
The freedom of standing on the edge of society.
And, of course, the moment of creating. Again and again, paper after paper, it’s full of pleasure and excitement but also frustration - you are confronted with your enormous possibilities, but as well with your failure and your limitations. I learn a lot from the work about myself and also about the human condition. It is always challenging und surprising and that keeps me alive.
7. Are there any ongoing projects or upcoming exhibitions
where we can see your work?
My works are part of two group-shows in 2019:
„Des fleurs pour Valentin“, Galerie Chaterine Putman, Paris (14.2. - 16.3.).
The other one is close to Hamburg: „She World“, Galerie im Marstall, Ahrensburg (22.9. - 27.10.).