When ceramics become a canvas
- Monika paints on ceramic forms
- Her distinctive painting style creates an optical effect
- She uses low temperature salt firing
There are two hearts beating within Monika Debus. One is the heart of a painter and one is the heart of a ceramicist. But even though they are beating together, there is a clear hierarchy. “My work primarily focuses on painting and only secondarily on building a form,” she says. The clay bodies serve as a voluminous canvas for her grid-like painting style in black and white. In the interplay of brushstrokes and shapes, a sculpture is created. However, what sounds complex is kept fairly simple. “Technically complicated things, which require exact planning, are not to my liking. I prefer to leave certain things to chance.” For her, chance and deviations are a reminder of the manual creation process.
INTERVIEW
I first came into contact with ceramics in a workshop at school. I later took an apprenticeship and studies at the State College for Ceramic Design in Höhr-Grenzhausen. In 1993 I moved into my own studio and have been working intensively with the formal language of ceramic vessels ever since.
I use the same salt-firing technique that was used in the Westerwald for centuries, only with a slight modification to adapt it for modern aesthetics. It is not the functional value of the objects that interests me but the artistic expression.
The pieces are fired at 1140°C, a comparatively low temperature, so that the matt surface receives a thin salt layer which changes the colours from light to dark. However, the influence of the salt can only be predicted to a certain degree, it can improve a work, but it can also destroy it.
When an object appeals to me emotionally and takes my thoughts into another world. It is an affective response. It is certainly not perfection that makes a piece good, because perfection is only a technical term.
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