Vanessa Wenwieser

Hello Dear Vanessa Wenwieser. Thank you for giving us the chance to Interview you. Can you share how your journey as an artist began and what inspired you to focus on placing women at the center of your imagination? 

My pleasure and thank you so much too, you have been so incredibly supportive over the years. 

My journey into the art world began as a young child, I’ve always enjoyed drawing, painting and crafts and I delved into photography very early on too, inspired by my father who was a great photographer. Later on I progressed into other art forms, such as printmaking and digital art, as I loved the layers one can create and build a story as well as the non-destructive way of working that lends itself extremely well to experimenting. 

I started placing my focus on females, not just because I am one but because I wanted to transform the walls of galleries and museum and in art books with the art of women made by women; as through the centuries females had just been seen through the male gaze and the art world was and still is to some extent very male dominated. 

I was disillusioned of this one-dimensional point of view and I wanted to show females from a female vantage point and expose the many facets of what it’s really like being a female; the hopes, the thoughts, pains and fears as well as the strength women have within themselves. 

I portray women as the multi-dimensional figures that they are and I am confident that this would inspire many other female artists to be inspired and slowly showing the world what female artists and females have to offer and making it easier with every generation of female to live out their lives as artists and also have inspiration from female artists that came before. After all, we make up half of the population, why ignore and hide what they really are and feasibly through this inspiration there will be more and more female gallery owners as well as museum curators that will show female art.  

2. Your art attempts to bridge the gap between appearance and being. Could you elaborate on how you approach this theme in your storytelling elements? In your pieces, you explore the distinction between how women are perceived and their true selves. How do you translate this complex idea into visual storytelling? 

I begin by exploring and photographing women, appearing as they are, nude and bare and then I add metaphysical elements that describe who they really are and what they think about deep inside. It’s a mixture about my own feelings, which I very often incorporate or situations that my female friends have experienced. 

By looking at them, most people can’t imagine what they have been through, how sometimes difficult their lives are and how they managed to rise every time they were knocked down time and time again. I wanted to celebrate this and show the world what women are capable of, regardless how delicate they look on the outside. 

I do this by adding more layers of photography and draw on the images to give them a painterly feel as well as adding aspects from nature like flowers and leaves and vines, strength is not evident in muscle but the most delicate plants or the wings of butterflies often through their delicateness have a power that is more pliable and can re-build itself over and over again. 

For example, in Japanese armor or the way that the Japanese build houses because of the frequent earthquakes they make thin but many layers so the shock gets absorbed, that’s how females are and should be, when they get together they can overcome most obstacles. 

I enjoy revealing the resilience that women have deep inside themselves. I show scars or wounds that symbolise the hard times they have gone through and maybe even wings that have been ripped out and then within this I have new plants and branches blossoming and forming them in the shape of wings. This demonstrates new life and the strength to change and grow new wings a symbol of freedom. I  believe that my titles reveal another layer of what the art is about. 

3. Vulnerability is a significant element in your artwork. How do you balance portraying naked emotions while maintaining the imaginative beauty you aim for? Your work often showcases raw and vulnerable emotions. How do you ensure these feelings remain beautiful and imaginative, rather than overwhelming for the viewer? 

The vulnerability comes from revealing women, without hiding, as they are and showing their emotions and adding elements that are raw like wounds and scars but never in a horrific way, always remaining within the beautiful. It is what I am drawn to, that there is beauty in most things. 

The images themselves are dark, due to the colours, even my reds and greens are on the darker side and the vast expanses of black. Dark is also the sorrow and bad times I portray but it’s like in a baroque painting with lots of darkness and only a small area of light, there is hope and that light shines even brighter because of all the darkness. Without darkness there is no light. I am not drawn to the grotesque but certainly to melancholy and sadness with a hint of hope. 

4. Many of your artworks explore transformative emotions like love, healing, and metamorphosis. How do you decide which emotions to focus on, and what do you hope viewers take away from these depictions? Transformative feelings play a crucial role in your creations. What is your process for choosing these emotions, and what impact do you hope they have on your audience? 

I choose these transformative emotions as I find them to be the most inspiring as they are so life-changing and give the viewers hope in their own lives. That things can change for the better. Lately I have gone through very life changing circumstances  and that of course will also influence my art. I draw from my own experiences and it helps me to heal from a vast emptiness and sadness inside and in a way I choose emotions that I am going through to hopefully help others who are going through something similar. 

During Covid for example, a lot of my art ventured around the feeling of being restricted and claustrophobic and wanting freedom, I will always investigate this as it’s never over for me. When I feel similar situations arise, I will make art to help me get through these negative emotions. It allows me to travel within my mind without leaving the house. It’s the best way to improve my mental health. 

Unfortunately I have lost already many people in my life, friends and parents as well as parents of my partner and this, of course, colours my way of looking at the world, that everything is transient and nothing is forever and the rooms we inhabit, and our world becomes emptier over time. To understand and picture this as well as coming to terms with it and showing that there are still paths to venture and mountains to climb, one still will always have things they can still look forward to. This is what I’d like to show. There is so much beauty left in the world, even though my soul is tinged with melancholia. 

That is to say I also explore happy feelings of love or just lost in imagination, the whole human experience.

5. How do you utilize space in your artworks to evoke the sublime, and why is this important to your portrayal of emotional landscapes? The use of space is a key element in your work, particularly in creating a feeling of the sublime. Could you explain how you achieve this and its significance in conveying the emotional depth of your pieces? 

I would say I give the artwork the space, in the form of physical space, to not overcrowd the subject, the dark space for thoughts to arise or a sea of flowers that envelope the subject. Then there is also the metaphysical space or to not overcrowd the ideas, to allow the viewer to have the mental space to think. I don’t like when too many things happen and it’s hard to concentrate, I love simplicity and clarity. I think the areas that offer drama and colour come out much more effectively when the rest is darker, as Leonard Cohen said: “there is a crack, a crack, in everything.  That’s how the light gets in”. 

It is extra drama and allows for the sublime to unfold, like in a cathedral or in the mountains when only a a ray of light comes through but what is lit is so beautiful it moves you deep inside. I feel in order to move people like that it needs time and space and the darker and deeper I venture the more bright and beautiful the light and the subject will appear. 

6. Your aim is to immerse viewers in your otherworldly depictions. What techniques do you use to draw people into the world you've created within your artwork? Creating an immersive experience within your art is a central goal. What methods or techniques do you employ to invite viewers to inhabit the worlds you depict? 

To attract the viewer to come and dive into my work, red is the colour I use frequently, which is inviting and adds drama and often paired with the complementary colour of green from nature which look amazing together and lure the viewer in. Then there is the darkness upon which the light seems so dramatic and looks like a baroque painting. To heighten this I also use painterly effect I create to make it look beautiful and textured and old, I feel this gives it more of a feeling of life experience, as well as asking the viewer to wonder which mediums I’ve used. I like to create that feeling of wonder.  I’ve also started painting in layers to add to the image or actually on the finished image, which looks gorgeous and heightens the textural sense of brushstrokes.

7. Lastly, for those who are new to your work, what is the one message or feeling you hope they experience when encountering your art for the first time? For someone unfamiliar with your art, what is the key message or emotion you want them to feel when they first engage with your work? 

That one emotion of thought I would like viewers to behold when they first look at my work, is that in an evermore dark and tough world that there is still hope, there is beauty and light to be found everywhere and you should never give up hope. There is hope for everyone especially for the women and other marginalised groups who maybe feel they are not listened to or heard. I try and give them a voice, make them feel seen and represented.