Paintings by Olav Schiedel, contemporary artist
Images are optical stimuli paired with imagination
As a child I could spend hours by looking at wall tiles, linoleum floors or veneered furniture.In my imagination, knightly figures emerged from the fallen veneer of my room door, the structures in the floor became distant landscapes like in books and every tile in the bathroom told its own story.In the bustle of everyday life, we adults often are not able to find the time for daydreaming, to let our imagination run free. Some even forget how to do it.
With my art I try to deceive our perception, to allow misinterpretations and to provoke them. My paintings do not reveal their secrets at first sight and encourage us to let our imagination run free again. The spectators have very different associations, which fascinates me again and again.
Enjoy my pictures.
Olav Schiedel
About me
About my acrylic artworks
With my current works I explore the boundaries between abstract and figurative perception. In doing so, I often remain deliberately unspecific and fragmentary in order to allow the viewer to make various associations. Most people see faces and ghostly figures in my paintings, which I also suggest in part schematically. Contours and backgrounds at first feign a secure view, but this often dissolves into a new variety of parts when approached, from which the brain assembles new random bodies. I make targeted use of the fact that our perception wants to recognize supposed faces in shapes and contours.
The topics of Sensory Deception & Perception have been on my mind since the beginning of my artistic work. Through experiments in sculpture and etching, I have always returned to my dynamic, impulsive technique from the early years, which is inspired by Mess-Painting, and which now shapes my paintings again.
Olav Schiedel
I was born in 1974 in Rheda-Wiedenbrück and live and work in Paderborn, Germany. After an apprenticeship as a carpenter, I graduated in 1999. From 1998 to 2002 I prepared myself autodidactically in various painting techniques for a teacher training course in the field of art. Between 2002 and 2004 I studied to become an art teacher at the university of Paderborn under Prof. Franz Billmeyer, Prof. Jutta Ströter-Bender, Prof. Franz-Josef Keyenburg with the main focus on sculpture, painting and etching. After completing studies early, from 2005 to 2016 I worked as an entrepreneur outside the art business, but had to quit due to a chronic illness. Since the beginning of 2020 I restarted to work as painting artist.
Exhibitions:
- 2020 group exhibition Libori Spezial ART20 (european ARTISTS e.V.), Kunstverein Paderborn
- 2008 solo exhibition St. Vinzenz Hospital Wiedenbrück, Germany
- 2004 group exhibition "Atelier 2" in the Kulturwerkstatt Paderborn, Germany
- 2003 2003 solo exhibition "Delusion and Vision" at Art & Antik in Paderborn, Germany
- 2003 group exhibition together with students of the University of Paderborn 20 years town twinning in the Hotel Gromada, Przemysl, Poland
- 2002 group exhibition together with students of the University of Paderborn "BOOKS IN MOTION: BOOK-MATERIAL-OBJECT" in the library of the Ruhr-Uni-Bochum, Germany
If you are interested in my work as an painting artist or for other issues, please feel free to contact me. Mail: o.schiedel@paderborn.com