“I want my work to open up new spaces, rather than to dominate the room.

A new space in the life of everyone looking at it, a sense of possibilities.

Even that which weighs heavily can unfold its own beauty, if it is given this wide space.”

Petra Gimmi

As a geographer, and with nature being my main inspiration, I often work on my paintings like the elements of nature do on a landscape: They experience flood and drought, new material is accumulated and shifted, layers of paint are eroded like layers of rock, I look for transparency as if looking deep into a body of water, and for the colours to fan out like in a prism or in a raindrop in the atmosphere.

My work moves in between the abstract and the figurative - what you see might remind you of the physical world, but my intent is not to mirror nature, but to work in the living, like nature.

I grew up in the south of Germany, in the rough, remote and beautiful landscape called “Schwäbische Alb”, full of rocks, beech forests and juniper heath. I’ve always had a deep connection to nature, and at the same time an urge to get even closer to it. For me, the artistic process is one of the ways I follow that desire.

I first studied geography and got to know the elements of nature and the interconnection between rock, soil, landscape, atmosphere, climate, water, plants, animals and humans. While I appreciated this knowledge (and the perfect reason for extensive travels my studies gave me), the realisation that just knowing and seeing were not enough, but left the actual secret untouched, lead me to study art.

So in my artwork, my focus is to get closer to that secret, to examine the living, all of life, and our place in the ever changing world. I aim to “enter into the thick of things”, to use Paul Auster’s words, and also to bring the freshness and wideness of that encounter to the viewers of my works.