This site is a place to post work but also to write and explore research. I consider the posts to be like a research journal. Often times there can be a sense of pressure that we place on ourselves to only post things that are deemed perfect. What we put online has to be polished, refined. There is benefit to this approach, however we can loose the understanding that creativity is a process. When I teach my middle and high school students, I share that your sketchbook is a place to experiment and to make mistakes. Research journals are a place to yap about interesting ideas that surface and connect ideas and to brainstorm. So this website is a mix of things – final portfolios, reflections on museum visits, art ed resources – and also a place to document visual and theoretical research.

Today I want to reflect and document the work of Anselm Kiefer. His work and life inspired me on very personal levels:

• Born in Germany in 1945, right after WWII ended. He is still alive today.
• He just opened a show, “Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea,” a landmark retrospective at the Saint Louis Art Museum (October 2025–January 2026), which features massive, river-themed paintings.
• His work is influenced by his childhood in post-war Germany and the catastrophe of WWII
• He unflinchingly confronts the atrocities that German committed during the holocaust.
• Principally a painter and sculptor, his work became a means for him to advance his self-awareness, identity, and to face the complexity of human experiences alongside the heartbreak of history.

His works that are often done on a large, confrontational scale. It is also characteristic of his work to find signatures and names of people of historical importance, pivotal figures or historical landmarks. He also encodes sigils in his art through which Kiefer seeks to process the past has resulted in his work being linked with the movements New Symbolism and Neo–Expressionism. Materially, Kiefer participates uses nontraditional materials like lead, ashes, and kneading straw. Through that, we have the opportunity to feel and touch the artwork more actively.

I appreciate the way the visceral materials and scale overwhelms viewers into surreal landscapes. I love the way he is unafraid in investigating the impact of violence on humanity and the earth, bearing witness. I resonate with his themes as an American painter with German ancestry. His use of symbols and spirituality also encourages to see how I can work sigils of resistance into my work. I am intrigued with using raw materials like sand and/or burnt materials into my paintings.

Here are some articles and resources to check out:

• The MET: https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/anselm-kiefer-born-1945
• Gagosian Quarterly:
  • Interview: https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2014/10/06/anselm-kiefer-royal-academy-art/ and
  • Photography: https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024/07/02/interview-on-anselm-kiefers-photography/
• Mass MOCA: https://massmoca.org/event/anselm-kiefer/
• Singular Art magazine: https://www.singulart.com/blog/en/2024/02/15/to-the-unknown-painter-by-anselm-kiefer/?srsltid=AfmBOorpFCkdeF0lkgqJYYqwvekkkbqANqNQZEmTRyhlIno62ceLluQG
• Phillips Gallery: https://www.phillips.com/detail/anselm-kiefer/183104

Thanks for reading and learning about Anselm Kiefer with me! 🙂