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The more abstract her paintings become, the more weight the surface structure achieves. She does not build this up over the entire area, rather certain sections have more layers of a structural mass consisting of silica sand and binder than others. She then leaves trails in these with a brush, ductor or other scraper tool to create a microstructure in relief. Claudia Betzin’s range of colours focuses on turquoise, orange and red – based on personal preferences and affinities. If these colours, standing for energy and vitality, are also the most prominent in her painting, the underlying layers are almost always in black and white.
“Colour change” was planned as a process-related exhibition project to accompany the congregation of the protestant Andreaskirche in Bergisch Gladbach-Schildgen through the church year. The current liturgical colours should always be visible in the chancel as both paintings and lectern and altar hangings as well as in the stola and chasuble. The next colour in the church year then moves into the chancel, the previous picture is moved to south wall so that all of the pictures fill the church with every colour throughout the year and surround the congregation. This project is the visual realisation of the omnipresence of the entire history of salvation.
At first glance, the ten paintings that were produced within nine months in 2005/2006 for the “Colour change” project do not differ all that much from Claudia Betzin’s earlier art. They are abstract – not monochrome – acrylic paintings mixed with silica sand that are finally coated with varnish. This gives the panels a silk lustre finish and concludes the working process.
Whereas the audience simply sees these as free paintings, the artist took a completely different approach to this cycle than before. The job of painting pictures in the liturgical colours of the church year posed a big and new challenge for the artist since she was very aware of the artistic tradition of “Sacred art” and inferred a great demand from this, particularly on the “Supratemporality” of her pictures. The beginning, the first stroke on the canvas, was thus more difficult than for many of her previous pictures that had no context. But once this first step had been taken, the process took on a life of its own that had not been rationally planned by the artist. This was one difference to the approach taken by Thomas Schmitt, who produced the liturgical robes, lectern and alter hangings for the “Colour change” project. The cooperation between him and the painter was characterised by the fact that they took part in the process of creation of each others work in a dialog. For example, Thomas Schmitt adopted certain colours or lines of her painting as delicate threads or embroidery in his paraments.
He developed and sketched his ideas rationally, drawing on his great knowledge of symbols and tradition, before ordering exact quantities of the sumptuous materials and finally realising the design. Claudia Betzin’s works developed during the process of painting on account of the completely different approach.
Her most important artistic decisions in this cycle, which she wishes to retain as such, relate above all to the format and resulting singular or multiple parts. This resulted in three large diptychons in the colours green, white and purple for the most commonly used colours in the in the liturgical calendar, a narrow black diptychon, as well as an upright format in red and a smaller format in pink, a very rare colour in the church year. These pictures were not produced in succession but simultaneously on several canvases as work in progress – to be regarded as a cycle of intermeshing developments and painting processes. A special mood connects these works since the artist studied biblical texts and rituals in the church year very intensely for this project. She came closer to the existential and spiritual questions of being and what actually makes up the church than ever before on account of these preparations. As the artist herself said, this was “an expedition” because she “entered into a dialog with colours and the resulting forms during painting”.
When choosing formats, Claudia Betzin takes both the significance of the colours in the Christian church year and the architecture of the Andreaskirche into account. The two-part compositions in the colours green, white and purple have to function as both separate entities on the left and right of the chancel as well as close together in the sections on the south wall that achieve a certain rhythm thank to the windows. The situation is different for the narrow black diptychon in an upright format, that is either close together to the right of the chancel or is experienced as a single unit on the south wall.
Claudia Betzin's paintings are intertwined with different types of archaic symbols and do not refer directly to Christian imagery. Several lines, trails, characters and coloured fields find their continuation in other canvases and thus connect or interlock these multipart works, even though they are separated by the natural stone recessed walls of the chancel.
We will now examine Claudia Betzin's painting in more detail taking the picture in the colour "purple" – symbolic for transition and change, the preparation for a high feast in ea church context – as an example: Purple is worn in Advent, in Passiontide before Easter and normally at funerals as well as on Penance Day. Since the artist had not used this colour up to this point in time, it was particularly difficult for her to start work on this painting. An experience in a spiritual night in the Andreaskirche, during which a large gong was struck, was of crucial importance for the composition. Its sustained reverberation alerted the artist to pictures of archaic actions, a stone tossed into water whose waves spread further and further from the centre. This work has a lot of grey and white, which she chose deliberately as a contrast to purple. In the middle, encroaching on both panels, we see a large purple shape straining upwards and to the right. This purple, which has a very complex meaning in itself in both a secular and ecclesiastic context, contains all shades from red, pink, blue and black, as if a knowledge of the other periods in the church year were resonating in the image. Other associations are brought to mind in the church by the diagonals that appear as dark slits on a light background when viewed from a distance. The two-part large form in the middle – an instable "upward yearning" on the left panel, a larger coloured field on the right that remains balanced between aspiration and serenity, giving the composition a harmonious tension and stability – also suggests a movement, the transition from one state to another. This gives the picture its complexity and density, expressed in the form and colour. The picture rightly means so much to the artist because in it she ventures into uncharted waters, grapples with, questions and finally overcomes her own doubts, something which she would not have done without this challenge.
If we compare the "white" picture with the purple one, the complexity and introverted nature of the visual statement becomes even more obvious: the white diptychon is not white but contains a number of different shades of beige, grey and yellow in addition to this colour. In the liturgical year, white is the colour of light and angels and is used during high feasts. It is regarded as being clear and pure, but the artist brings in other aspects by mixing it with warmer, light colours: for her, the colour white embodies a positive emptiness and openness that has to be filled. This allows much more scope. If one considers the two-part composition, the first impression is that of an image that is mirrored of along the central axis. A grey line joins the two canvases like a retaining frame. Whereas all of the other lines tend to run slightly down to the right, this bold grey frame is the only parallel to the stretcher, once again underlining its retaining and protective function. A large block with fine horizontal lines, which reminds us of the Tablets of the Law or a gravestone in the liturgical context, is crossed by a yellow horizontal line that dominates the picture. This connecting line stands for growth and continued growth according to the artist. Work on this very speckled and dynamic picture, which appears much softer from a distance than close up, proved to be a very exciting debate with the colour in its entirety for the artist, with its own energy and radiant power as well as its symbolic significance in an ecclesiastic and secular context.
One big difference between the approach taken by Thomas Schmitt and Claudia Betzin was that although the painter was aware of the symbolic content and tradition of the individual colours in the liturgical context, she did not transfer these symbols into her pictures but reacted to them atmospherically. Many artists whose works are shown in a church today – even if this is only temporarily – avoid all-too direct allusions to biblical contents. And in Claudia Betzin's pictures too, the idea is not to identify and decipher Christian symbols. Through contemplation, the process of perception, which always involves some self-perception, we have the possibility to experience a more meditative contact with the picture, the space and its being. Associations and ideas from the field of everyday, secular life mix with those of Christianity, the Church and the sacred space.
Without the context of the church, the viewer sees very dynamic and intense pictures with no objects. The search for a certain expression becomes particularly clear in the overlapping layers of colours. A knowledgeable person's attention is only drawn in a certain direction by their presence in a church, indicating that individual colours have certain meanings in a liturgical context. Whereas this perspective forms the basis of work for Claudia Betzin, it is not clear for viewers of her works. If the same works are hung outside of sacred rooms viewer are confronted with pictures that they can only judge on the basis of their own feelings, moods, visual experiences and the lifeworlds that they carry with them.
Claudia Betzin did not paint the pictures in this cycle malt differently, did not add any imagery, but remained true to her previous style of painting with the bold dynamics of the brush stroke and the paste-like application of paint. The possibilities and qualities offered by abstraction are confirmed in her pictures: she leads the viewer to the realisation that we can only see what we already carry in ourselves: feelings, experience, faith, knowledge.
Petra Oelschlägel