Dear Marianne, you can look back on a rich and fulfilled artistic life. Ho did you enter the world of painting?

M. W. in a naive sense colour was much nearer to me than form. After my training as topographer at the „School for Gestaltung" in Basel, I began looking for spiritual aspects beyond formal design. My idols were Klee and Kandinsky. Then I met Gerhard Wendland and he gave me clear instructions how to use descriptive means to enter the realm of painting.

J. B. The relationship to other people and true painting also accompanies you in your painting work.

M. W. Yes I was happy to be asked to give lessons which I really love doing and which brought me into encounters with other people.

J.B. In your beautiful bright atelier, I got the impression that your pictures radiate joy and the acknowledgement of life as a basic disposition. It is as though here your life and your art seem to join hands, unable to be separated.

M.W. I have always tried to build a connection between painting and everyday life. I have always tried to bring everyday life and painting together. The themes were always around me, straight and curved lines, circles, enclosures and colours … especially colours. When my three children were still small I was continually busy with clarity and chaos. 

J.B. That means that your view of the world is an interpretation by looking through the prism of the elements of painting?

M.W. Yes, but in all those years I also busied myself with other themes, always trying to put them into a picture. The Polarities within the artistic means always focused on the in-between.  

J.B.  Your two pictures: Seeds I and Seeds II immediately appeal to me. For me they seem to develop something mystical within the quiet of the unsayable and versatile life: for me it is the open space of evolution; the creation of something in-between; a conversation between the forces of colour and the forces a form, something loving, teasing, and yet drawing attention and rejecting interest; colour is looking for form, and form yearns for colour. It is a game of reality, which only art can play with and approach. I have become aware of how these creative principles come together without negating their own character. We as human beings are born into this harmony between colour and form. That is what your Seed paintings tell me. The image of the moment of birth of life that unfolds in processes.

M.W. I discovered the path through art, painting and teaching, a path leading to the secret of life. 

Marianne Wachberger: A painter with her own atelier in Dornach. Many exhibitions; close cooperation with Hannes Wachberger (paintings and objects) and other artists. Regular visits to Sekem, Kairo, also a guest lecturer at the Heliopolis University in Kairo. She teaches art in the upper school and grown-ups. <link http: www.wachberger.ch _blank external-link-new-window external link in new>www.wachberger.ch

Jasminka Bogdanovic, Painter, eurythmist and consultant. <link https: bogdanovic.ch _blank external-link-new-window external link in new>www.bogdanovic.ch