MUNTHE ART MONDAY: UNA URSPRUNG
Instagram: @una_ursprung
Website: www.unaursprung.com
Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.
My name is Una Ursprung and I was born in 1985 in Taipei, Taiwan. Now living and working in Alsace, France. I mainly create oil paintings and watercolor works with the theme of nature, environment, and climate. I have focused on depicting landscapes, especially forests and trees. Throughout every stage of my creative development, the forests reflected my life experiences at the time. In the early stages of my career, I studied in Brittany, France and I painted mostly peaceful mystic forests. After graduation, I returned to Taiwan where I started painting sceneries and forests nostalgic of the past and imaginative of the future. Since 2016 I have been residing in the European countryside where life is tranquil. Here, I rarely encounter any distractions and mood swings, and I have even more motivation to adapt to my living environment. I live a simple life by following the course of nature, which gradually leads me to a pastoral lifestyle.
My creative desire arises from a simultaneous drawing of figurative scenery and abstract painting. I like combining these two types of representation. I am also interested in a variety of mediums and techniques to explore the space and visual sense of painting.
Could you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?
For me I would not define myself as a "female" artist, but rather as an artist or a painter. When I first started my career, I didn't feel that being a woman posed any difficulties for me. Maybe I got more attention and opportunities as a “young female” artist, or maybe I was just lucky at that time.
However, the biggest impact of being a woman on my career was when I had a family and children. That's the most challenging part of being a female artist, I think, it is to find a balance between creating and taking care of children. Creating is a job that requires a lot of dedication and focus. But as a new mother now, I really can't devote myself to creating.
Can you name some other female (artist) that inspires you and explain why they do so?
My favorite female artist is Helen Frankenthaler, a leading female abstract expressionist painter in the predominantly male era of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Frankenthaler poured pools of highly diluted pigments onto her raw canvases. The thinned-out acrylics soaked into the fabric — stained it in veils of color. The colors in her paintings are so intense but light and gentle, just so beautiful. I love the landscapes she paints, and I appreciate the way she feels the world.
What would you like people to notice in your artwork?
I have never wanted to impose a point of view for people to see my work. I give my ideas to the work as I create it, but when it is finished, the work is independent. What I am looking for is for the viewer to see my work in a way that triggers their own thoughts, or what personal experiences my work reminds them of. Sharing past experiences with each other is what I think is the most precious and important.
