Judith Anna Schmidt

Judith studied art in Paris, Ghent, and Barcelona, and animation in Potsdam. She has lived on the Rhine island of Grietherort since 2006.

She is primarily a painter. From her studies in animation, she has retained a fascination with time narrative strategies and musicality as elements within artistic processes. She also thinks incessantly about art— through collaborations and exhibitions with other artists, through conversations that she moderates (Alumni Kunstmentorat NRW), studio visits, curating art projects (die Pförtnerloge, Kunst im Freien), and leading tours for adults and children, at Museum Schloss Moyland and Museum Goch.

Based on her experience of working with colors, brushes, formats, perception, and light, she is interested in how the methods, ways of thinking, creative joy, and freedom of artistic practice might be transferred to initiatives in a social and political context. The tension between art and life—very present in her everyday life as a mother of six—sharpens her focus on the question: How do we want to live? How can art remain purposeless and free and, at the same time have an impact? How does art take responsibility and assume a function within our shared social life?

This curiosity has led to the initiative to establish the Waldorf School in Uedem, child-day-care “Spielgarten Grietherort”, residency formats at the Grietherort campsite, “die eierlegende Wollmilchsau – organisierte Kreativität am Niederrhein”, and the project space and art association Kunst im Freien in Rees.

For the residency in Hombroich, my interests in painting and in shaping spaces and social contexts come together. At the beginning of the residency, we show paintings in the Kirkeby Chapel, in a collaborative process with three Berlin-based painters and our host, Georg Schmidt.

My plan for this period is to explore sacred spaces for art—to learn from the Insel Hombroich, both as an idea and construct, as well as from the works and the people present on site : I want to observe, listen, draw, paint, experience the clarity of the spaces, and test their aesthetic system of values – in relation to the organizationally challenging reality of my everyday life.

The working theme of my year is: the point of departure.

Where the contemplative spaces will lead me remains open.