Martin Weyers—visual arts, symbols, myth

Last update from January 1, 2007

"Myth must be kept alive.
The people who can
keep it alive are artists
of one kind or another.
The function of the artist
is the mythologization of the environment and the world."

Joseph Campbell,
The Power of Myth

Martin Weyers works as a professional artist since 2002. His studio is located in Ludwigshafen am Rhein (Germany), close to Heidelberg, where he lives today.

Artist's Statement

My artistic work has been influenced by a deep interest in mythology and philosophical metaphysics. Painting and drawing, to me, is a way of exploring transcendence: The real world beyond perception. In the arts, I don't care for reproducing the visible world, and yet my works relate to the visual, but in a way, that transcendence shines through.

The figures on my paintings can be understood as "biomorphic forms", rather than actual human beings, and their field of action is usually no landscape, but an abstract space out of light and paint, sometimes with cosmic connotations. These works are pointing beyond the general field of experience. There's something mysterious in evolution, which comes through, when living beings are pictured as evolving and transforming organic forms in a dynamic environment.

The difference between my art and much what is called "spiritual" art, is that my works are based on experience rather than belief, and furthermore, that there's room also for the tragic as a basic aspect of the human condition. I feel compassion with the creatures on my paintings.

British sculptor Henry Moore and German painter Emil Schumacher are among those artists who have had an impact on my artistic development. However, I remain of the conviction, that today's challenge for the artist is the reconciliation of modern art and classic compositions and painting techniques, with the objective of creating visionary art that relates to the world of the 21th century.