artist’s statement
My work begins where language ends. I paint not depictions but atmospheres—ephemeral, near-abstract landscapes that are not necessarily places, but spaces where presence and absence coexist. What appears on the canvas is less a representation than an evocation: a residue, a vibration, a feeling.
I am drawn to Wilfred Bion’s concept of “O”: the unknowable, the raw real, the thing that can never be fully thought or seen. In this spirit, I approach the canvas not with intention, but with receptivity. A state of not knowing allows forms and marks to surface slowly. The painting evolves as a kind of visual listening. I resist interpretation. I aim to hold the residue of emotional experience—the part that escapes meaning yet lingers in the body.
Muted palettes, translucent layers, and active negative space generate a perceptual tension between what is seen and what is sensed. My paintings are shaped less by what is painted than by what is withheld. Bion’s “beam of darkness” guides me toward a perceptual mode where the faintest feeling or form might show itself more clearly in the absence of light. These canvases hold the weight of what cannot be spoken—fields of inner atmosphere, an emotional architecture. They are spaces of residue: what remains after the emotional event has passed.
I approach painting as a practice of surrender. Without concept or plan, I trust the surface to hold what I cannot hold myself: the absence of knowing, the echo of something once felt and never fully grasped. Inspired by Carl Jung’s explorations of opposites living in harmony, my paintings attempt to embody this dynamic interplay, embracing complexity rather than certainty. I believe that clarity rarely emerges from one-sidedness; instead, true understanding comes from holding multiple truths simultaneously. There is a vital energy in this capacity to feel more than one thing at once, to dwell in uncertainty, and to engage with the nuanced textures of the human experience.
The female form has long been my muse—an emblem of strength, resilience, and vulnerability. Through it, I examine the interplay between physical and emotional dimensions of existence. Over time, my practice has expanded from figuration into abstraction, where landscapes and atmospheres emerge as structures of energy and rhythm.
Building upon the technical traditions of the Old Masters, I reimagine their methods for contemporary expression. Layers of refined brushstrokes construct depth and atmosphere, creating compositions where grace collides with disproportion, melancholy pulses with vitality, and vulnerability coexists with resilience. Each painting becomes both an inquiry and a fragment of Becoming—an unfolding of pain, renewal, sensuality, and transformation.
Constanze Waeger (b. 1980, Germany) studied Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art in London and Film at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. After a career in film production in New York and Los Angeles, she established her painting practice in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, where she continues to live and work. Her paintings are held in collections across the US, Spain, the UK, and Kenya.
