Charlotte Schleiffert (1967)
The large canvases and drawings of Charlotte Schleiffert, with their rough-hewn lines, clashing colour fields and daring choice of media, like crinkled aluminium foil, PUR foam, or synthetic fur, show that the artist is drawn to grand gestures and effervescent energy in her work. Much of her oeuvre exudes a physical directness that comes from our focus on the body and concepts such as power, violence and love.
Schleiffert has a flair for the quick-drying types of paint, like egg tempera and acrylic, which are appropriate to her fast painting style and the pace she pursues in her work. 'Before I start on a painting, I have usually made some studies that I use as a starting point,' says Schleiffert. 'So the painting itself goes very fast, and it has to. Once I did a painting that took three or four weeks, and at the end I had just painted it to death. As I became more and more perfectionist about it, all the vitality went out of the piece. But that vitality is in fact the very soul of my work.' But text is also part of it: Schleiffert takes inspiration from telling one-liners that she draws from songs or the media, and press clippings and photos have also been known to inspire the artist to new work. Her works are brash and hard, yet vital and winning.
* www.nrc.nl, web interview, R. De Gruyter 28.10.1999
