Stella Meris paints the body in the head

Today we expect again a great visitor in the Ephra Studio – Stella Meris. The painter and multimedia artist will show us what they do. And Stella has brought a lot with them – colorful masks, a very long arm of fabric, framed pictures and even digital works. Suddenly, the otherwise white walls are teeming with colors and shapes. What are we discovering in the works? We are collecting: eyes, drops, a car, grass, houses, an arm, faces and fingers. A comb, a rock with a portal, a sun (or an eye again?), teeth, an antenna – among them are some things that Stella has not even seen in their paintings. We could go on like this forever!

Stella says that in the beginning they never know what the finished picture will look like. Sometimes Stella starts with an idea, which then develops completely differently. Often the artist turns the painting upside down or cuts up the canvas and puts it back together again later.

And how does Stella know when a painting is finished? Here, the artist trusts their gut feeling intuitively. If Stella is not sure, they leave the painting alone for a few days and then looks at it again. Sometimes they don't know until a year later whether a painting is finished or how they can finish it.

Next, we want to know from Stella where the ideas for the motifs in their paintings come from. Stella explains it this way: sometimes they feel like a sponge that soaks up impressions and then lets them flow into the pictures. When they lived entirely in Berlin (Stella studied here and now commutes between Berlin and Basel), many urban structures moved into her paintings; now they live more in the countryside, which is why you can discover more nature and animals. (Stella’s favorite animals, by the way, are butterflies, rabbits and birds).

And how do all the body parts come about? Before painting, Stella consciously concentrates on their body sensation, close their eyes and pays attention to how their sense of body and space changes. This exercise is called body scan. Afterwards, Stella often draws outlines of their body and its parts on the paper or fabric.

In general, the (own) body is very important in Stella’s work, in painting or in the performances they do together with a collective (consisting of three other artists). We remember that a performance is a presentation in front of an audience, where you make art with your body – through movement and interaction with the space. A remnant of a performance is the long cloth arm in the corner, into which you can stick your own arm. We try it on right away and in no time at all a kind of collective performance emerges. The arm is much too long for one person and the arm bearer gets support from a fellow student.

We ask ourselves: If the body is so important to Stella - how come they also work a lot with digital, i.e. disembodied media? Stella had her first big solo exhibition in a gallery during the pandemic... and no one was allowed in. So Stella thought about how they could bring art to the people. The result was a whole world that you can explore with virtual reality glasses, and Instagram filters that look like her masks. We try those out and have a blast taking group photos of ourselves.

Finally, we also get to paint a large piece of fabric à la Stella. Of course, we start with a body scan and all lie down on our backs. With our eyes closed, we listen to Stella’s voice, which directs our attention from our toes to our feet to our arms to our heart. At the center of the body, we pause briefly and feel a warm sensation as all our thoughts arrive in the belly. With the feeling of the body in our minds, we first draw each other's outlines on the fabric. This almost looks like a (tragic) accident has taken place. Collectively we then fill the blank canvas with galaxies, hands with painted fingernails, flowers, different animals, eyes, rainbows, drops, muddles. We paint with colored pencils, oil pastels and acrylic, with both hands, left and closed eyes - but most of all: all together. This is what we will remember. In a few days we can look at the dried picture and then decide from the gut whether it is already finished... just as Stella would do.