Jana Lavinger

My name is Jana Lavinger, and welcome to my gallery. I always tell my students that the process of making is more important than the result, and that's how my story can be conceptualized. I have never had the ambition to have my paintings hanging in galleries. I have created and continue to create all my life for the joy of the experience I always have while painting. Painting for me is almost a spiritual experience. Painting, and art making in general, takes you further not only in terms of improving technique but in terms of transforming you from the inside out. Why do I paint? Drawing is basic and accessible to everyone, so I teach it to my students. I enjoy working with the surface more than contour today. As you may have noticed, I enjoy creating large formats. When I'm up close, I feel like I can step into them. The large format also allows me to abstract much better and thus also give the viewer a chance to figure out a lot of the details. When do you find it best to create? I create best when I can have music playing, it's kind of a dopping experience. I usually paint when I need a distraction, but the truth is I need to feel good for it to turn out well. The ideas usually come shortly before painting. I make a quick draft and get right to it. That used to be unthinkable for me. Creating was not so free and abstract. When I'm en plein air, I also don't paint exactly what I see, but I capture the atmosphere, I need to capture how it affects me. And then to find my "flow" when it's just me and the canvas, 4 hours go by and I forget to perceive time. That's the best feeling I can get from making art. How do you pass on art to others? The way others are moved by the experience of the theatre, church or concert - I can't immediately give away the music or the performance. I have to work for a year to make an opening. I'm not an introvert, but it's beautiful, that inner communication with myself, with my inner self, because no one disturbs me. And I'm also relieved of the shame when a painting doesn't turn out. A lot of people ask me how I got the roller technique. The truth is, my colleagues and I used to use a roller at work to apply a surface, and somehow I thought it was actually a way to continue. I tried painting two paintings this way, memories of trips to England, and both paintings were gone in no time. So I stuck with the roller (for now). I enjoy the roller because up close you can only really see the spots, but from a distance you can see the painting very concretely. The structure offers the pleasure of every detail of the resulting whole, but you will always look at it differently. What are your ambitions? My ambitions are simple - I just need a small space where I can show my paintings to those closest to me who enjoy my art, or in fact any viewer who is really moved by my paintings. For me, success is when someone actually buys a painting - they exchange their energy (for hours when they had to earn a given amount of money) for my energy. This exchange of energy is much more to me than the earnings themselves. Then I really feel that someone cares about my art.