what that story might be about – he leaves the viewer wondering. Though to his quote I would add “..not just from within the head, but from within the heart!” He is one of my favourite contemporary painters. In my work too, I want to create an illusion, a feeling of heightened awareness in my images which in their final version often bear no resemblance to scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Cornwall Dreams, Acrylics on wood panel 50 x 50cm
the original but have become enhanced and imbued with a dreamlike quality. Our memories too work like that we often see past events and places in our minds eye in an enhanced way, and give them qualities they never really had. I don’t necessarily set out to do this from the start of a painting or digital image, but during the process it becomes like that, somehow. Maybe it IS because scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Henriette Busch Land Marseille from above, Water colours on paper, 20 x 20cm.
The empty pool at night, mixed media on canvas board, 30 x 40cm
I embellish my memories so they become more special than they really were? Or, because I want to re-create a time, a place, which has gone and will never come back? One of my friends who is also a painter, recently commented on my work, saying “when figurative and abstract merge as one, that is your best work” He was referring to my recent painting “The beach at Bude”, (but also other, older ones) about which he also said “’…a kind of distortion…beautiful…your own way of distorting reality, your special way of deforming reality” I loved his comments, because I felt he really “got” me… You are a versatile artist and your production encompasses both abstract and figurative works. Still, each of them conveys such stimulating visual ambivalence, able to walk the viewers to develop personal visual grammars. In this sense, we daresay that your artistic production aims to urge the spectatorship to a participative effort, to realize their own interpretation. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the illusion: how important is it for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? Henriette Busch: I would like my work to be understood in exactly that way – to trigger the viewer’s imagination so that they can see something in the image, and project their own scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Henriette Busch Land Strange Flower, Mixed media on wood panel, 30 x 65cm
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition The blue house, Mixed media on paper, 30 x 50cm
interpretation on to it whether it is a drawing, a painting or digital work. Their own interpretation could be completely different from what the work is about, but it doesn’t matter, the point is that there is something arresting in the image that they like, that somehow resonates and they want to look at it for longer than a second. If I can achieve that, then I feel I have created something that has succeeded. In my current exhibition LANDLINES, it is lovely when people see something in my paintings which I hadn’t previously thought about or that it reminds them of something in their life. Marked out with balanced sense of geometry, your works — more specifically The fields were already harvested and The Lanes — feature recurrent smooth contours and shapes that we dare say essential on the visual aspect. Would you tell us something about such refined geometric feeling? Henriette Busch: For some reason which I don’t understand myself I have an affinity for lines – parallel and diverging, shapes, repetition and symmetry – but also wild, asymmetric lines such as in CHAOS, which felt more like doodling. I was never good at Geometry so where this obsession with lines comes from I just don’t know…The painting The fields were already ploughed was loosely based on a walk in fields near me, but it was completely from memory so where I couldn’t remember the exact layout of the field in relation to everything else, I just made it up and added some lines until the composition worked. As you have remarked once, in your digital art Henriette Busch scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
Sunset at Port Isaac
you fuse parts of your paintings and photographs and through juxtaposition create new and different meanings. This process often has unexpected results and produces images which are new and exciting: how do you consider the role of chance and improvisation playing within your artistic process? Henriette Busch: The role of chance and scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition The Pleasure Garden, mixed media on deep edge canvas, 60 x 60cm
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Henriette Busch Land Among the reeds, Oil on canvas board, 40 x 50cm
The fields were already ploughed
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Reflections, Pastels and acrylics on paper, 50 x 40cm.
improvisation plays a huge part in my work – but so does control! I have learnt over the years that whenever I try to do a certain painting based on a pre-conceived idea – or when I try to create a big version of a smaller painting – this plan often fails…halfway through, I realise this and give up on the idea. Then I go with the flow and let my intuition, scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Henriette Busch Land The house with the pink bougainvilla, mixed media on canvas, 70 x 70cm, framed.
chance and improvisation take over. I believe the reason why these plans often fail is because when you try to do something exactly like an example, spontaneity goes out the window and so does intuition. However, I do have examples where the plan did work and those are paintings which I’m quite proud of, because they were very difficult and took a long time before I felt scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Gertie on the low wall, Oil on deep edge canvas, 90 x 90cm, framed.
they were finished. Some examples are Gertie on the low wall (chosen as Painting of the Day in June 2019, by Contemporary British Painting) and Gertie with the pink trousers, pre-selected by the Mall Galleries in 2019. They were both painted from reference photos and very meaningful to me as the house in the paintings is my mother’s old house in Liberia where she lived Gertie with the pink trousers, Acrylics & Oil on deep edge canvas, 90 x 90cm, framed scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Henriette Busch Land
until a brutal civil war which started in December 1989 and lasted until 2003. But even though both these paintings are based on photos, I took liberties with some aspects of the photos – for instance, I did not include all of the tropical plants as it would have made the painting too crowded. In my digital work, improvisation plays an even bigger part because of the endless possibilities available in Photoshop. Though I only use about 1% of the functions available in this programme as I don’t want to use features just because they are there. My use of photoshop is very deliberate and judicious so that I can create the effect I desire. I don’t know in advance what effect that is, but I know it when I see it. I achieve it by merging a part of a painting, or a photograph (my own) with part of another painting or photograph and then by the juxtaposition of these, and using layers and colour saturation I create “new and different meanings” It’s finished when the image I have created reflects what I want to express, and that I find exciting. An example would be “No Entrance” based on a beloved house in my childhood and early youth that I no longer have access to, and Fragments of Life. https://henriettebusch.com/digital/ I feel very lucky to have had such an eventful and stimulating life from which I can draw endless inspiration. You are an established artist: your artworks are in many private collections in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, USA and Dubai. Since since 2003 you have had the chance to exhibit widely over the United Kingdom, including your current exhibition LANDLINES: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? As the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to online platforms — as Instagram — increases, how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Henriette Busch: Our exhibition LANDLINES was conceived with 2 fellow artists who are abstract landscape painters. So even though I don’t consider myself an abstract landscape painter only as I do non-abstract work also, for this exhibition I created new abstract work, based on the landscape. Both my art colleagues work with a limited palette so I decided to do the same so that our paintings would harmonise – and they did! We each had about 17 paintings in this exhibition. Sofar we have had many inspiring and lovely comments about how well our work goes together, how well it was curated, and people remarked on the synergy between the works, despite our very different painting styles. These comments were from artists and non-artists alike, and they were very gratifying. Examples of some of my work in this exhibition: The beach at Bude, Dreams of Cornwall, The green door, Aerial View, and Landlines from above. Henriette Busch: To answer your question, of course there is a huge difference when the visitor can actually engage physically with a picture, get up close, ask questions and so on, scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Young woman with headscarf, Mixed media on MDF, 60 x 40cm
The white house on the hill, Oil on canvas, 30 x 20cm
vs viewing it online. But Social Media is here to stay and is undeniably a great way to reach a much wider audience, across the globe, which no physical gallery is able to do, in the same way. So there are pros and cons for both platforms, I would say. Interestingly it seems that physical galleries including art fairs are still very much in evidence, although quite a few have gone online only since Covid, for instance for Open Submissions, even if they still have a physical presence. This is probably for financial reasons now. Personally I have had more success selling in physical art galleries or art fairs, not so much (yet) on Social Media. I hope this will change! https://www.instagram.com/buschhenriette We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Henriette. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Henriette Busch: And I really appreciate that you have taken an interest in my work and that you are including me in your publication - I really feel honoured. My next projects, once my exhibition finishes, is to produce more paintings based on my recent wonderful course in Cornwall. Those paintings will try to reflect the beauty of the scenery, in a semi-abstract way. I will use a limited palette however I may be tempted to use some extra colours because sometimes you just have to! After that, or even at the same time, I want to add more to an existing body of work which is abstract but based on landscapes, all the canvasses are the same size which is 30 x 80cm. These paintings are based on an idea that I want to explore more, which is how to best express a feeling in an abstract way, just using colours, marks, shapes and lines. These will all be acrylics, using the wet on wet & pouring techniques. After that, I also want to do more figurative and semi-figurative paintings based on my years spent in Liberia which, even though very long ago, were extremely influential and powerful, and inform my work to this day. I already have a large body of work about this time in my life, and have been adding to it over the years. The paintings The empty pool at night and Indigo Nights, for instance, are part of that body of work as are the figurative paintings of Gertie, and the houses. After that, who knows… An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Henriette Busch Land