– the light in the dark time

When the days get shorter and it doesn’t really want to get light on some days, a space emerges that no other month creates: an in-between place full of memories, longings and small wonders. I often perceive December in exactly this way – as if it has its very own, quiet form of magic.

This time carries a special weight. The days of Advent not only awaken the glow of lights and anticipation, but also bring back memories of unsuccessful family gatherings, of those famous meals where I try to maneuver my way around the many faux pas and at some point can no longer really enjoy the second helping. On these days in particular, the desire for harmony and closeness often clashes with the ordinary reality of family and friends.

And yet this is exactly where small shifts open up. I realize again and again how much power can lie in a simple sentence: I accept what is. Not with resignation, but rather with a form of silent acceptance. As if every experience – even the messed up ones – were a small pebble on my path that shows me where I am at the moment and what is already behind me.

And then art comes into play

It appears like a streak of light on the horizon – sometimes quite inconspicuously, when drawing, gluing, writing, collecting or arranging, sometimes just in amazement at an inconspicuous detail at the edge of the day. In these moments, distance is created. Something becomes lighter. A small object, a found object or a splash of color is often enough to show me that even the untidy can have its place.

I experience art as a free expression that cannot be forced. When I loosen my control a little, something begins to emerge that I couldn’t plan before. I don’t work to prove something, but rather to be able to breathe again and remember what is really important to me.

There is a quiet magic in that for me. Something new emerges without me having to fight against the old. I acknowledge it, sometimes with a little inner nod of the head, and continue working from there. Perhaps this is actually one of the most beautiful gifts of this time: to look at what is with a certain honesty and let something new emerge from it.

We don’t grow because we do everything right, but because we are prepared to capture our own stories in gold – or, if you like, in collages of everyday fragments and flower remnants that seek their own context.

Purple is joie de vivre

And in the midst of this delicate structure of darkness and light, there is a color that suits December particularly well: purple. Or purple, if you like it more familiar. A color of transformation, powerful and mysterious. It stands for change in the darkest time – exactly where the old stories have enough peace to finally be allowed to transform.

I remember evenings shortly before Christmas Eve when the sky suddenly lit up in purple, as if it had decided to take to the stage itself. An appearance that seemed almost staged. I couldn’t say at the time who or what was responsible for this. Perhaps it was actually the coal dust from the nearby colliery that cast these intense colors over the Ruhr area. My mother had another explanation, which I liked much better as a child: “The Christ Child bakes cookies.” And I was happy to believe her.

Today, I see it more as an interplay of memory and perception. My artistic work carries me a little beyond what I experienced, it takes away some of the heaviness of December and gives it a different form. The darkness does not become an opponent, but rather a stage on which I can decide for myself which colors I allow to appear.

December sometimes strikes me as a character that can’t quite be pinned down. Perhaps a teacher in purple velvet boots, perhaps a flamingo in a purple plumage, a little headstrong and with a fine sense of humor. A month that reminds me not to judge the unfinished too quickly, not to immediately push away the difficult and to leave room for the given.

When I bake or create small things, this thought often mixes in all by itself. A little of this magic then wanders into the dough, into my hands, into the materials, and later reappears in places where I would not have expected it.

I wish you a time in which such moments are allowed to show themselves – quiet, perhaps unspectacular and yet full of little miracles.

And here is another magical and true Christmas story

Every month brings me new impulses. So does the pink October and even the gloomy Novemberthe magical December as well as the January in orange and the February in graythe March in earthy brown and the moody April