Hojdyssek is a German-born, Australian artist living in Adelaide. An abstract painter deeply influenced by modernism, Denise creates art distinguished by harmoniously interacting shapes and textures. She uses a combination of shape, colour and texture to convey a mood and draw the viewer in.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your art practice?
I am an Australian artist based in Adelaide. I was born in Germany but grew up in Sydney.
I completed a BA Visual Arts Degree at the University of South Australia and majored in photography, and later completed a year of Design at the Design Centre, Enmore, Sydney. I worked for many years in various creative fields such as visual merchandising, styling, make-up artistry and photography. The visual skills I acquired helped me to develop a keen eye for colour, shape, and composition, which are represented in my current paintings.
We have very recently moved from the sea to the trees. We overlook a beautiful bush-like reserve. Friends call our place the Tree House. It is modernist in style running horizontally with every room overlooking a bushland vista. I have a studio out to the side which I intend to make my own and create new work inspired by my new surroundings.
Can you talk us through your creative process? How do you usually go about making your work?
My artistic process involves exploring different colour ranges and playing with shapes that I have cut out and placed into collages and further developing them into paintings. I love to discover textures, shapes and colours that move and excite me and I will often take many photos to add to my visual journal for reference – especially when I am travelling. Later in the studio, time is spent freely drawing or working with collage as a way of loosening up and developing various abstract shapes that speak to me. I continue to refer to these images for inspiration. My paintings involve a long process of building up painted surfaces with abstract shapes and transparent washes, then sanding them down. I like to work on canvas or wood.The process is repeated over and over again to create the texture and image that I have visualised for the final artwork.
How did you develop your personal style and how has it changed over time?
My work is heavily inspired by mid-century design and the Bauhaus period. These design aesthetics are featured prominently in my use of clean lines, shapes, and my aim to capture a harmonious composition.The Bauhaus period was introduced to me by my German father, who is also an artist. The Bauhaus movement covered a wide range of disciplines. The movement celebrated the freedom to overlap art and design. I have a passion for both. Travel is where I look for inspiration in texture, colour, and experience.
Do you have a preferred medium to work with?
Currently my main medium that I use in my paintings is acrylic paint. Because my work involves several layers of building up of the surface in paint, acrylic is suitable for my practice because it is quick drying and enables me to work at a suitable pace. To explore my concepts I use collage which involves painting lots of sheets of paper to then cut up and explore various shapes.
Tell us about the pieces you've created for the El Rancho series.
The El Rancho series excited me as we were given some visuals but it was also left up to our imagination to an extent to create works for it. For the series I decided to continue my exploration of abstract still life. Rather than painting directly from a still life I have made up my own objects and again added layers, marks and textures. I have also been curious with the dialogue between still life and abstraction and how it formulates a different conversation, ‘What would the abstract look like if it became more figurative?’ I am interested in how a painting reacts, for the viewer, when it sits with another painting of a different topic but its origin is the same.
