Interview with Gemma Kauffman: A Portal Into the Unknown

Gemma Kauffman has not long ago joined Rise Art, bringing her expressive abstract paintings to the system. Gemma has an unique technique to portray she meditates to dive deep within her consciousness, channeling spontaneous expression. Unhindered by the intellect her operate expresses the natural beauty of the pure entire world as seasoned as a result of the unseen, ethereal lens of the soul.

Gemma meditating in the studio.

How would you explain your creative fashion?

Religious, Summary. Expressive.

Chakra, 2019, acrylic, oil, ink, collage, pigment, 150 x 100cm

What concept and/or themes do you want to converse in your work?

My get the job done has a concept of soul earning and interior entire world activation/direction. For me paintings are a portal into the unknown, they can acquire us further than the surface of daily life and into the depth of Remaining. The immediacy of paint is the fantastic accompaniment to meditation for checking out a level of consciousness wherever every thing is connected. 

There is also a lightness and a joy that arrives through from functioning rapidly with spontaneous, expressive marks. Subsequent the flow of instinct is entertaining, it’s like surfing, you have to be incredibly, quite current. I obtain that operating in abstraction brings some form of distinctive synthesis and integration to the entire body, brain and spirit.

I know that when I’m painting I’m hyper mindful of the significance of dreaming, of liminal room. Of prioritising a room that is unstructured and mysterious, valuing a area for interior life to engage in out and rework.

Enchanted Bliss, 2020, Japanese acrylic, 120 x 100cm

How has your observe advanced above the many years? Have you generally labored in an abstract design?

My fashion has become ever more summary, the additional comfortable I am in the realm of the abstract, the much more pure the expression is. My early paintings have a lot more solutions of narrative hints of landscapes and figures, leaning towards symbolism. There utilised to be this rigidity concerning narrative and abstraction and I really liked this interplay. It experienced tremendous electricity and taught me so much about different layers of consciousness, such as the personalized, the archetypal, and the transcendent. Extensive ahead of I started finding out Vedic Information and Depth Psychology, I experienced the raw practical experience of paintings that were pretty impressive formative learnings. These days I have far more vocabulary and I’m much more familiar with what’s taking place. I like contemplating back to what it was like to go on those early portray journeys, I couldn’t pretty consider what was going on.

Further than Retro, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 76 x 61cm

I’ve turn into additional and extra at relieve with the portray approach. I applied to truly feel like I was portray for my everyday living! So significantly depth. Each canvas would be five paintings in just one. Partly a absence of assets, partly not understanding when/how to cease. Now with more decades of meditation and getting a trainer of meditation, I trust the method. I can entry the internal states that allow me to flow with the existing. I’m more attuned to the subtleties of the practical experience. I experience like paintings take pleasure in performing with me, they know I do my best to listen, that I can be bold and that I will not check out to maintain on, if the course of the painting is to let go. 

What is actually an ordinary day like in your studio?

The 1st second that I’m via the doorway I’m always taken back by how dazzling and stunning the area is. The first number of moments are like stepping into a dream. I’m generally with my faithful companion Nina, I love the sound of her paws padding down the corridor as we tactic the studio.

If I have a new portray, I go straight to it and sit down and drink in what is going on. Noticing what I observe, it is normally incredibly revealing, really curious how diverse a portray is the initial time I have stepped away and then arrive back. It’s the beginning of a new romantic relationship, a new journey. I’m not crafting anything at all, I am not definitely even pondering about nearly anything, just getting, just hanging out. I appreciate just hanging out in vibration, in intelligence, in an otherworldly location. It is so tranquil and energising.

Gemma painting in the studio

I really do not have a system when I go to the studio. The studio might have a plan for me. Receiving via the door is my major work and from there it just goes the way it goes. If there is a blank canvas it is really hard for me to resist. If there’s an invitation for me to carry on an current portray I just go with it. From time to time I’m extra reflective. I’ll pick up outdated sketch textbooks and ponder, it’s possible pick a divination card. I like not really realizing what I’m executing. I simply cannot power myself to do items I really do not want to do when I’m in that place. The studio is the put to calibrate, come to feel the risk, tune in.

It took a very long time to get the studio the way I preferred. Numerous friends served me alongside the way, painting and making and organising, there have been so a lot of diverse chapters of studio lifetime. So several phases of electrical power, I used to do a large amount of different things, this kind of as dressing up, cocooning myself in material, pictures, movie, writing, always drawing, a ton of ritual sort exploration, all of it has been discovery. The studio is an extension of a painting, it is an in among area, a desire place. If I was to meditate and drop asleep at the studio I’d nevertheless contemplate it a excellent day at the studio.

What/who are your important influences?

Artist wise I experience grateful for artists this kind of as Yayoi Kusama and Hilma af Klint. I truly feel like each these ladies gave me permission to be as rigorous as is required, to observe the threads of instinct. I come to feel like they both of those expert that the function they developed had a lifestyle power of its possess and that they were seriously responding to the will of the artwork, relatively than the other way round. It can sense a little bit out there at times, so I value artists that have gone to these deep places and shared their story.

Colour has a massive influence on me. It has generally been like that. The thoughts that unique colours emit, in particular from flowers and crops blows my intellect. A significant section of what I do at the canvas is experiment with how paint can match the saturation of geranium petals for illustration. Colours relate to every single other, it’s the juxtaposition and contrast that results in new colors. I see that canvas and paint is the great playground to find out what is feasible with color, with what feelings and atmospheres can be created and what electricity can be expressed. I indicate that in conditions of color composition, color harmony, colour clash/pop, there are no regulations, colours do unexpected points, primarily with modifying gentle. Dusk for illustration is incredible, the powdery lilac shimmer that seems as an auric edge… I haven’t even begun to genuinely go there but. A person working day. When we move closer to nature I will come to feel more deeply into these mysteries and see how it comes as a result of in my operate.

Egyptian Infinite, 2021, acrylic paint, oil paint, gold leaf, gold ink, oil pastel, chalk, varnish, 90 x 90cm

Depth psychology is a massive influence, Carl Jung, his journey of individuation via active creativity. This resonates with me so deeply. I’m really very clear that as a result of the paintings that have occur through me over the many years that I have been equipped to heal and completely transform some very deep stuff in my consciousness. Even though Jung has lived the example of what is feasible, Joseph Campbell has offered us the archetypal template of the hero journey so that we can framework and navigate our mythic daily life, the soul life. This is the great journey of our lifestyle, almost everything else is sounds. You would feel with Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung and James Hillman, that with all these fantastic lecturers that as a society we would recognise the value of cultivating our deep instinct, the initiation of the inward journey. We need to have to come to be the shamans of our have existence, to die and be reborn symbolically above and above all over again. In its place we purchase stuff and hope for the best.

Textiles, I’m nuts about previous retro fabrics, I adore the overstuffed fabric stores in Spain and France for illustration. The colour is legitimate, fabric these times it’s a lie, the colors really don’t sing, there is often a trace of black dye muddying the colour. It bothers me, it messes with my sensibilities, I never want folks to begin wondering this is what colour is. If color doesn’t make your heart sing – really do not take it. It really is not accurate.

Storm Flower, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 90cm

Who are some Rise Artists you’re taking pleasure in? 

I like Rebecca Hardaker. The way she is creating an experience with her painting. It also feels rather textile, the painterly equal of patchwork. Also that feeling of exploration, transcribing her wondering across the floor. Not afraid to invoke the interior kid, in fact appreciating and inviting this degree of expression. You know it would be energising to hold out with her paintings, it wouldn’t be probable to be passive. I like her use of color interplay – colours bouncing off every single other below, there and all over the place, however there is coherence, there is wholeness.

I fulfilled her in the rainforest, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 90cm

Are you at this time working on any enjoyable new initiatives?

Certainly. A challenge is in the pipeline combining spiritual coaching with paintings. I’ve received a group of paintings, most of them arrived by means of inside a two yr interval and they look to want to keep together. I feel like I’m getting ‘downloads’ that they have a team mission that they want me to arrive on board with.

Historical Ethereal, 2020, acrylic paint, oil pastel, chalk, varnish spray, 150 x 100cm

I appreciate divination cards. I really do not work with tarot, despite the fact that a person day I might. I have several other decks of cards. My favourites are the Enlightenment playing cards. I also have The Divine Female cards, Electricity Animals, so lots of diverse cards for different chapters of lifetime. At the starting of this year, soon after getting my daughter four months before, I was at the studio for the to start with time, hanging out, feeling seriously uncertain about what was likely on with my portray everyday living.

I had no power to paint. I was way a lot more into receiving the power from the distinctive paintings, so I just permit my notice go there and I began to obtain so a great deal power that for the initially time, I started off creating it down. Just about every portray desired to share some crucial healing themes with me. So I had a notebook of dialogue with each of these paintings. Then the graphic arrived into my thoughts to create a deck of cards relating to this group of paintings. In the style of a divination deck.

Gemma buying a card

So, I established a pair of exam card sets, just like the 1 I noticed in my mind’s eye. Then the plan faded and life received occupied once more. I gave a couple to my pals as items, types that I know seriously take pleasure in playing cards, good friends that have been on card journeys. Then in the past month or so it got truly lively yet again and I started coaching all over again. When folks have been at the studio I’d locate myself asking them to select a card and then we would meditate with the corresponding painting and wonderful stuff began to happen.

Gemma holding up the card that corresponds to the painting

Individuals would have wild epiphany, clarity, emotion, higher self guidance and I just kind of mediated the complete factor using my coaching competencies to keep the place for what was going on. So it is definitely opened my eyes to what’s doable listed here. I really do not want to get fired up and attempt and make it a little something prior to it’s completely ready. I’m much more open up to the plan that I might have to discover a way to help the paintings are living out their wish to be healing guides. No matter if that can come about in a gallery place or a religious retreat place I’m not certain.

By way of This Chaos, 2017, acrylic, ink, oil, pigment, varnish, 120 x 100cm

It’s a logistical nightmare due to the fact they are big items. On typical each a single has at the very least a person edge of the canvas 1m or more substantial so I are unable to just put them in the vehicle. So I really don’t know what the up coming stage will be. I know from the earliest days I experienced a experience that the paintings ended up a lot more like lecturers and I have wanted to add to this point of view of painting becoming a residing entity. This improvement feels an extension of this plan, having the stage so that individuals can in fact practical experience what it suggests to journey inward and get internal steering with guidance from the summary realm.

Gemma showing her card sets

I’d really like for it to occur in London but it may well not be the most fertile area. Japan and Portugal are on the radar.