About Heike Roesel

My etchings can be described as semi-abstract landscapes of vibrant colours, with wriggling lines, floating hills, beaches and seascapes and imaginative interpretations of subjects of interest.

The inspiration and motivation for my prints is the pure love of creating beautiful ‘worlds’ filled with joy, that inspire the viewer to find their personal imaginative narrative. I really enjoy listening to those imagined stories. And as much as a landmark, a book or an unusual event, those stories can feed back and form the base for a new idea. I write and draw daily to record my thoughts and images that strike me. This way I 'collect' ideas and develop images a new print will be composed from. 

Etching is a wonderful medium to allow for the step-by-step building up of an image. Every state of the plate-making process can bring surprises and force me to re-think how the image is developing, right through till the last stage of inking the plates and pulling the final prints. While I make the plates I test print them and experiment with finding the right colours. Sometimes there is more than one colour scheme that seems right. In this case I print two separate editions of the final image.

The artists that I find most influential to my work are Miro, Klee, Heron, Klimit, Amano as much as contemporary artist and printmakers. But it is the Austrian painter Hundertwasser who's work I most admire. Like me, he did not like straight lines, because they limit the imagination. 

And imagination is what else there can be.