Diane’s World

I have listened to this song way too many times in the past few days. The first time I really REALLY listened to it, I was in the U-bahn (public transportation) and I had to work really hard from doing some very embarrassing very public crying.

Damien Rice really has a heart that beats similar to mine, I think. Some of his expressions are ones I created myself to explain how I am feeling. When I am around someone I feel truly connected with, I claim to feel “warmer” - he’s the first artist I’ve heard use that expression in a song. To see the rest of the lyrics CLICK HERE.

Sigh… I think I’ve listened to more Damien Rice in Germany than any other time in my life.

Ok I have to admit - this is a content-loaded post. I actually have a lot to share with you, and it feels good.

First is the Buchenwald pictures - at the very end when we visited the place where the Nazis dumped the ashes of the cremated prisoners. It was creepy how it started snowing - the snow resembled ash a little too closely and gave me shivers:

I had been feeling quite down for the past week for unexplainable reasons (or let’s just blame anemia, yup? Good.) but suddenly things in my life got soo soo much better.

First of all, my wonderful sister, Rachel, video taped my art opening. She sent me a video of everything my art professors said about me, and it definitely cheered me up from not being able to be there. Here, now you can take part with me of my art show!

Second, I finally took the advice of a friend and picked up a paintbrush. I haven’t really painted for a month, but I’ve had paintbrushes, paints and canvases in my room for the past few weeks. Yesterday I finally finished my first German canvas painting!! I love it a lot, but unfortunately I can’t take it back to America with me. It’s 40″x60″… any German friends want a painting?

I also started a new art blog so I can post museum reviews, artists reviews and stories about my own paintings in order to help people understand my work and other art better as well. You can GO HERE and to the blog page to read the full story of this painting called “Erleichterung”. It’s part of a new technique I’m perfecting, called “Shower Paintings”. Yes, I may be going insane, but it’s all good. Insanity keeps me going.

And I just realized I had forgotten to post my very last Düsseldorf painting called “It’s Complicated”. It’s completely a desperate grasp of emotion… and sometimes emotion is admittedly very ugly:

I also visited the Neue Nationalgalerie this Saturday - I wrote about this in greater detail in my art blog on my portfolio site, but I recommend it - it was very good to visit my old friends Francis Bacon, Albers, Debuffet, Appel and Munch. Art brings me so much joy.

Oh… I dyed my hair! Ok ok ok… I know. Nothing special, I do that a lot. But this is my first time doing it… with the instructions completely in GERMAN! Good thing I’ve dyed my hair enough to know without instructions at all. I decided to make my mom happy by going a bit blonder. So mommy, this was for you:

Ok ok, I know. All I have to do now is start wearing pink and carrying a small poodle in my handbag. At least it matches the yellow in my eye color. Oof… I’m not sure if that is a good thing.

Finally, something actually quite exciting happened to me today. Everybody in our class is required to give a small presentation on their favorite thing. It only needs to be a 3-5 minute presentation, so it’s really no big deal. My teacher thought that it would be a good idea for me to give a presentation on my artwork, since she knew I was so bummed about missing my art exhibition in Iowa.

I showed the class photos of these paintings and a few others, and explained the first one in greater detail (in German! yay! I finally can say useful things!

after a quick 5 minute explanation in German of what I do, why I do it, and how I do it… my classmates started to ask many questions. I got to talk quite in depth about my paintings, and soon I was sharing a bit of my life story. The 5 minute presentation turned into a 25 minute long discussion about my life and my art work! Quite an unexpected bit of joy for me, thank God for little joyful things in my life I don’t expect.

…and I’m starting to notice more and more that my life gets worse and worse the longer I stay away from art. It’s like it’s unhealthy for me to not make art. I hope this continues to be proven true.

In other news: For anyone that lives in Germany: I have a free week at the end of April! I was thinking about going to Greece, but Greece had to screw up my plans by planning Greek Easter at that time. Grrr. So, I want to take a week long trip starting around Düsseldorf/Köln, heading to Heidelberg, and hopefully making it to Zurich, Switzertland. If you live anywhere in the line of this trip and would like to invite me over, I would love to make plans to visit you!

I think it’s time for me to finally shut up. I hope you all are doing well. Please keep keeping in contact, I absolutely enjoy hearing from all of you back home!

Much love and best wishes for your week,

Diane Marie