Christina Jarmolinski, Modern Art.

Paintings Collages and Prints

Florida colors her world

In: 
News Press, Fort Myers
location: 
Fort Myers, Fl.
On: 
Wednesday, August 26, 1998

 

News Press Fort Myers, 8/26/1998:

Florida colors her world

Landscape's light and spaces influence painter's palette

(…) Painting and teaching painting is what Christina von Jarmolinski has done for a living since the 1970s when she was painting scenery in opera houses in Germany and Austria. Later she opened the Rainbow School for Children in Augsburg, Germany.

 

"I've never been this settled, this isolated really," von Jarmolinski says as she removes a floppy straw hat from her head and runs her fingers through her wild blond hair. "For years, I lived in big cities in Europe. I love all this space. And you know what? The German tourists still find me."

And so do area art lovers who collect her work, which is exhibited at several Southwest Florida galleries. On Sept. 4, a recent piece will be shown at the opening of Art Sans Frontier in Royal Palm Square in Fort Myers. (…)

Standing at the barn's wide doors, looking in on the assortment of her work is like looking through a kaleidoscope. At every turn of your head there are different blendings of colors and shapes to absorb. There's a working refrigerator painted to look like a piece of abstract sculpture. There's a real sculpture in the shape of a pyramid.

At the center of all this, on a paint-splattered, table, is a long, blue, stretched bare canvas. Later in the day, the artist will begin to turn the canvas into another side of a screen she's working on - a screen that when finished will depict the daily life of the region's Calusa and Seminole Indians but in abstract ways.

"I'm taking the Florida colors from the sky and putting them into tangible settings," von Jarmolinski explains, pointing to faces amid the vivid colors of the moon and the sun and fire. "My palette is changing since coming to Florida."

Her older paintings are darker, more delicate; her recent work is bold and colorful. It tends to inspire a strong response in viewers (…).

As for the future, "I don't want to make borders around myself," she says. "I like to keep my mind open so ideas flow into me."

Maureen Bashaw

 

 

USA