Featured Artist - July 2025
Birgit Nass
© Birgit Nass
Tell us a little bit about your practice as a maker.
© Birgit Nass
My working process is often set in motion sometimes by a tiny found object from nature: if the special shape and colouring of a leaf appeals to me, it can become the seed for an entire project. I use all my senses: how does the leaf feel, what colour is it, are there special drawings and structures? Does it have an odour? Does it make a sound - or can it make a sound? What would it taste like? All these questions allow me to grasp the leaf more and more deeply, which I then successively translate into my artistic language in lines, shapes, colours and textures. In this way, I always manage to develop new techniques from working with the found objects. In this way, I get closer and closer to the natural artefacts, entering into a resonance from which a collection of drawings, texts and objects emerges, which together form a work.
Where do you thrive? Where do you struggle?
© Birgit Nass
I don't find it particularly difficult to get into a work flow. I love my work and if I have a topic that interests me, I can lose myself in it and delve deeper and deeper into it. This is also where my love for my project books and objects comes from. I pick up a thread and follow it, get involved and become a part of it. That makes me happy.
It can be difficult when I don't follow my own instincts, but try to fulfil expectations of a certain result in my work that are either placed on me - or that I impose on myself. This slows me down and also doesn't correspond to my way of working, which is always slowly evolving - whereby the complete documented development process is the actual work rather than the one result of it.
Who/What influences you?
Japan inspires me a lot at the moment. I appreciate the clarity and simplicity of Japanese aesthetics and philosophy and try to adapt them for my work and translate them into my own formal language.
The sea is also a place that continues to inspire me. Many projects have already emerged from my involvement with the sea. I go there several times a year to work. The energy of the sea is one of my sources of strength.
But the many fantastic artists from my now large network also inspire me and influence my work. I love to think outside the box and seek to exchange ideas and work together with other calligraphers, visual artists, authors and theologians. These are always very fruitful processes and often result in very special (joint) projects.
What is one intention you have for your practice this year?
One of my current favourite projects is a book that I am working on together with an author friend: In dialogue with nature. This is about my very personal way of working, which I would like to share with others and which has so much in common with nature writing.