Sybille Schlumbom a.k.a. billadonna

Interests

I always wanted to be an alien life form designer.
But that is another story and will be told in another time at another place.
I am, and always will be: passionate about storytelling, in words and visuals. While I work in a range of media to fit the project at hand, I am a painter and graphic artist at heart and by training.

My passion for  mokuhanga/ Japanese water based woodcut led me to the  Lake Kawaguchi in September 2018. (http://endeavor.or.jp/mi-lab/aboutus/ )  My five week at the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory artist residency have been an amazing experience. The possibility to focus on my artistic development under the guidance of excellent practitioners in their field has extended my mokuhanga  vocabulary immensely. 

Print is a fantastice playground for the mind. It is defined by negative space. The image is determined by what is taken and what is left  to the same degree.

An allegory to life. We want to belong, but what defines us, our life, our persona, is absence and loss  as much as presence- of a friend , partner, family, familiar  surroundings, language, peace of mind,  sky above, earth below. 

Is negative space the defining feature of the 21 century? And can we turn that into a positive, by using the absence to create presence that has clearly defined boundaries, strong contrast, shadows and light? And are we still talking about art here, or life, or art, or death?