PAINTER. MANNHEIM, GERMANY.
My name is Alexandra Bald and I was born in a rainy, west-german town called Hemer in 1981. I moved to Berlin as fast as I could after school and studied Visual Communications at University of the Arts. While working as a freelance art director in Berlin I kept doing free projects and exhibitions. I also experimented with different techniques like photography, print making and ceramics.
I basically painted since I was a child. As a teenager I thought about studying fine arts but as I come from a family that is not interested in art at all, I chose something more „applied“, more tangible. I don‘t regret studying design though, I like being able to be a border crosser. My painting style has been figurative, some years ago I moved to abstract because I found it more interesting and accurate to express my artistic positions.
For me painting is like thinking. I get lost during the painting process, I fully concentrate on what to express. My work focuses on identities and relationships – so I guess it needs to be a deep dive every time 😉 I just recently started working abstract. For me it’s quite a relief and I am happy to experiment with various material. I got bored with figurative paintings and drawings. I find it interesting to express the vague, the subjective, the uncertain through an abstract painting style.
My studio is located in an old office building in Mannheim´s harbour district. It is surrounded by warehouses, cranes & shipping containers. Sometimes you can hear sirens and other noise. I actually love to go there by bike to get the feeling of leaving the city and entering another world. The building is going to be refurbished in the future, so the interior is pretty rough at the moment. For me it’s perfect to work at; I love the wooden floor, the broken walls that can be covered with paint without hesitation.
Art expresses the inexpressible. Art is a solution, it means progress, it is an attempt to understand the world we live in. For me the term art is full of heaviness and loaded with prejudices. I sometimes wish there was another unencumbered word for it because art is so essential for human beings and should sound open and light.