Artist statement Noella Roos

As a traditional-based artist, I am always interested in using my knowledge of technique to transform my experience of the world around me. As a drawer, my techniques are the tools I use to meet my dancer. I do not have a concept as a statement, rather; the way I work is my concept.

I draw dancers while they are dancing, as quickly as they dance. In a 4-hour session in the studio the dancers and artist fall into something like a trance, or Taksu as it is called here in Bali - I call it energy sharing. These are the moments when I, the artist, forget what we are making, forget to judge, forget to think, and become free to make work beyond my limits, and to surprise myself. This is the moment when I and the dancer meet without words.

My meetings with a dancer are not to copy reality. I work with dancers because they embody and share the trance or energy of being. Being is living for me, and the movement of a dancer gives me the freedom to draw what I feel. Even if my work looks figurative, it is not. It is abstract figurative drawing based on personal emotions. I do not work with still models because they are not moving and real life is about movement and constant change. I love the statement from Pina Bausch; “I am not interested in how people move but what moves them.”

When I met Wolfgang Laib and heard him talking about collecting pollen to make his art I understand that the collecting is not the art, but the pollen. The end is just a yellow square. I recognize that in my own work, only with me you see the figurative abstract form of my dancer, the energy of a human body which I catch in my work.

Working with dancers has a strong tradition in art history. My work is based on many artists before me, but I use this tradition to make my work immediate and personal, against all fashion.