“Art does not reproduce the visual, rather, it makes visible.”  Paul Klee

Life is a circle, without a beginning and an end.  Everything breathes and moves, nothing stands still and freezes.  This is supposed to be evident in my work.  The hectic of the everyday atrophies our senses and weakens our imagination.  In order to let scents, sensations and sights work on oneself, people have to give themselves time. They have to find themselves in order for pictures to arise in the mind.

In my works I try to make what I see perceptible, to penetrate the borders between pure observation and sensual understanding, between nature and structure.  I smell something and begin to pain and to form.  My watercolor and ink drawings make this process visible: the colors run together and mix, they live, breathe and stimulate all the senses of the observer.

I rediscover the topography of old landscapes as I render them in art. In this, I use primarily old maps of Berlin from the archives of the Technical University and invite the observer to new adventures in greater Berlin.  The colors and figures bring forth the beauty of the lines and drawings, including the natural beauty of the roots and plants.   Trusted perspectives change. New paths open up and lead to a changed understanding of reality.

My art books consist of neglected books of literature, on whose pages I paint, in order to bring them to new life.  They are witnesses of memories that want to be revived.  In painting and drawing, I begin to read or to rediscover previously read texts.  Then a dialogue occurs between the word and the picture.  I can best draw on well written books! Words, too, are living and they are still to be seen, even after I draw on them.

For years, I have gathered various bearers of smells in a fragrance library, which now consists of hundreds of glasses and bottles.  Fragrances transmit feelings and memories that arise not only from smelling but also in their conserved form.  Whoever takes time and lets memories awake, can sense and experience his very personal history. 

Nathalie Giraud