Carola Huttmann is an independent writer and artist living in Orkney. She has appreciated art all her life but, as with poetry, only came to writing about and practising it during the past two decades. She is interested in the idea of Ekphrasis and in the ways in which it can be utilised and explored artistically and narratively. A further subtext to this, as she sees it, is how art is reflected in nature and vice versa and how both are portrayed in literature, either as single concepts in their own right or in conjunction with one another.
Carola’s art focuses on collage, digital and geometric design. Creating a kind of otherness which allows the viewer to see and interpret it according to his own ideas, experiences, tastes and outlook, she believes, frees her work from perceived artistic and social constraints and, thus, leads to seeing the unexpected for both artist and audience. In her Artist’s Statement she says:
“It is the imagination’s ability to transmute simple forms and shapes into alternative ideas or, sometimes, even three-dimensional everyday things — a building, a person, a perceived scene, or something in nature — which interests me.”
Carola calls her art practice Beyond Borders. Its concept is her attempt to break free from what the eye and brain expect to see. It is the opportunity to visualise, in forms, other things and ideas; to allow the imagination free reign. In other words, it’s the artistic equivalent of bringing personal experience and insight to the understanding of a poem.
