Isabell Seidel

some fun facts

Essential Landscapes

Painting starts with travelling, real or imagined, the contrast between familiar places and the surprising new, sometimes only an unexpected point of view in an otherwise familiar scene. I marvel at all that grows - explore, recreate and cultivate that process. 

Being in nature readjusts me in the big picture, reinforcing in a both humbling and reassuring way the great contradiction of human life: a single person being totally insignificant to the world affairs and interestingly because of that might dare anything because so what?

While my other creative outlets have a more practical orientation art never needed that. It seems, at the same time, absolutely essential to us as humans and irrepressible in myself. Painting is my most intimate expression of self and as such reflects the yearning, the longing to make the bond between the outside world and my inner one tangible for the one willing to look. Less conventional colour choices stated in daring marks or sensitive brush strokes hint at the feel of a place, integrating it with its outer appearance often stripped to its basic form - place, always place.

I studied architecture but later switched to German and Spanish Philology and Pedagogy. In 2008 I graduated from Universität Hamburg with the 1. Staatsexamen   and in 2010 in Schleswig-Holstein with the 2. Staatsexamen summa cum laude. A few months later I moved to Spain and started teaching German at Universidade de Vigo the following year. About the same time I became involved in the Urban Sketching community, and began to organise sketcher meet-ups, teach workshops on watercolour and plein air painting and to participate in outdoor speed painting competitions. My urban illustrations have been part of editorial projects and fashion collections. Since our youngest was born in 2019 I´ve been working full time as a professional artist.

April 2021