Lisa Reichmann is an embroidery artist from Halle, Germany.
“Embroidery correlates to my process of image conception: it lets me find my inner peace and makes me able to concentrate on the essential.
“My abstract embroideries are never the realisation of a draft. They develop in the process of embroidering. Since I don´t have a draft, the image stays alive during the whole process of creation. I can change the thought behind the picture any moment and thereby influence the outcome. In this task my hands play a crucial role. They are the ones, which guide needle and thread and realise the imagined shapes. They are in direct contact with the material and surface. I think the shapes but my hands reinvent them in the process of embroidering. The hands are the ones who integrate their sensual experience into the process of thought and convert it into a reflective thinking. In practice that means: I realise the embroidery.
“Why do I embroider? I sit down and am here. I force images from a time that works backwards. I am still and wait, I sign every gesture of my body. Embroidery puts me in peace. I connect with embroidery home. I have time to think about what I’m doing. With the needle, I describe the imaginary forms , the threadkeeps it into fabric. I am focusing for years on a job. I feel for me and create images. Does it make sense that I embroider? No, I don`t think. It is a kind of self hostage, a restriction on the one piece in one work. It’s a lonely job. It’s totally pointless, but beautiful!“
Abstraction is a good thing from time to time. The experience of looking at work and forming your own conclusions is a a worthwhile pursuit, and the interaction between art and viewer is the very concept that underpins the whole genre. Lisa’s work provokes that kind of response.
Her use of found materials, montaged together in seemingly random manner, mashes up the past to create refreshing modern pieces. The nod to the past is there, but is not as obvious as with other artists who knowing homage bygone times.
Lisa is also working on an ambitious “Endangered Species” series, embroidering 197 birds that were identified as facing extinction in 2011. Thus far she’s stitched 20 of them and Lisa hopes that she can capture them quicker than extinction does…
Find out more about Lisa at her website or follow her on Instagram!
