Esther Cecilia Boehm
Esther Cecilia Boehm photo

About

Esther Cecilia Boehm photo

Being a bit of a nomad, I have always worked in and with whatever materials the environment I lived in allowed. Sometimes larger sculptural works were possible but other times it was only small drawings. With every move, the conditions, and hence work, changed. On a trip to Carrara in 1998, I began carving stone, then later wood. Just before moving to England, I found a damp and decaying but beautiful piece of wood in the Palatinate Forest in Germany. This was the beginning of a new body of work involving small figure ‘impressions’ made of raku fired clay. Exploring the context of the figures started an associative chain reaction allowing me to explore new ideas. I love the ambiguity of meaning that can arise; an opportunity for the viewer to consider and decide. Recently, the opportunity to exhibit in a large space reminded me of the challenge I had during a symposium in Germany where I created large objects that were suspended in a derelict brewery. Now, I have made eleven large pillar figures that were inspired by a drawing done in 2016. The objects were conceived to be connected and flow through a space allowing visitors to walk through them. What is exciting is that a change the arrangement changes the aesthetic of the piece. Regardless of the materials I use, it is the visualisation of something inside and outside of myself that has always been the key motivation in my work.

German Canadian artist, Esther Cecilia Boehm, was born in Edmonton, Canada in 1958. She studied Fine Arts from 1976 to 1980 at the University of Alberta where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in sculpture. She has experimented and worked with a wide variety materials both 2 and 3 dimensionally. Boehm's paintings and sculptures are found in the collection of Barbecon Paper in Toronto, North Cemetery in Munich and in private collections.