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The painting ‘Butscha’ bears a powerful message that leads the viewer into a realm of remembrance and reflection upon the tragic events in Ukraine. It is held in striking black and white tones and dark browns, depicting destroyed houses, ruins peppered with bullet holes, and an avenue filled with craters leading into nowhere. Rust-colored tank wrecks line the path, while a solitary woman with red hair stands lost in the middle of the street. Abstract …

View of an abstract-looking landscape. Some recognizable features include a few shorelines in a yellow broth with peculiar contents, alongside what seems to be dying tree trunks in the upper left corner of the painting. Additionally, there are foam heads in red mud along the banks. However, the significance of all this is brought to light by a green, abstract pattern resembling a fence, which prevents the viewer from accessing this evidently toxic lake of …

In this striking painting by Kerntke, a vibrant landscape unfolds, characterized by masterfully composed patches of color that particularly accentuate the foreground. Deep red subtropical earth tones stand in stark contrast to the multi-layered shades of the leaf-covered olive tree trunk. Chaos seems to emerge from the black grid-like structures intersecting the branches, intricately woven with adjacent yellowish and greenish lively brushstrokes, forming finely nuanced color fields. A majestic tree rises at the left edge …

The idea for this painting goes back to a small shelter house for ducks in my vicinity. So it’s really existing! The topic is actually highly prominent these days. Generally speaking, refugees are looking for shelter. The old story of wealth and poverty:  those living uphill in nice, secured villas and those living in an almost sinking hut down in the flooded terrain. The titled little hut here is entirely overgrown by plants. One could …

This painting is influenced by frequent walks I made during pandemic times along the nearby creak named Alster. The riverbanks within the northern part of Hamburg are characterized by a park-like landscape with lots of trees, swamps, roots, small ponds and some fens. A green natural resort and an antipode of urbanity. The ponds in the foreground are dominated by autumn leaves floating on their surfaces. Further, we recognize lots of bleached roots and brown-black stems …

Cats and pets are an old topic in art. There is probably nothing special about cats and dogs in paintings. Lions in paintings date back as early as 32,000 years ago. Therefore, the list of its portraits is long around the globe. In painting, cats became very prominent, especially in Europe in the 20th century:  Klee, Picasso, Chagall, Matisse and Marc, to name a just few, have portrayed their own cats many times and additionally, …

This is an homage to my cat Shari, with whom I used to walk within a little natural resort of a nearby stream. In this painting, I have combined different styles of art informal and a few realistic elements (e.g., the head of the cat). Additionally, the light during the so-called blue hour highlights reflections on the waves and contrasts with the deep blue shadows of trees and branches. The roughly indicated few ducks in …

Since ancient times, pandemics have tortured humans on earth. Nowadays, higher population density and mobility cause a faster worldwide spread with higher fatalities. Now we witness a new one, named Covid. The medical staff, scientists, and most communities are doing their best to fight the disease against the resistance of illiterates. Scientific facts ignoring politicians in Berlin and elsewhere hardly could manage to control the worldwide spread. Yet Covid seems to play with all those …

This is my most recent painting about the human fight against the recent pandemic. The frequent trial to control and reduce the spread of this malignant disease is similar to the unfair dance of the most powerful tiger with a fragile dancing nurse. As we all know, cats (big and small) play with their victims before they finally kill. A human trial to control the virus by various clever methods is similar to dancing with …

In this painting, I placed a fragmented body in a floral, natural environment. The leaves and branches appear ruffled in front of the blue sky. The bushes are founded with their roots in red tropical soil but some undefined human parts and some remains of bones and human liquids with slides and patches seem accidentally scattered in the central part, somehow self-dissolving and molten with nature.

This artwork thematized the night light in urban space. This little composition appears like a look through the windscreen of a car towards a shining artificial world made of light and its reflections. Chains of numerous headlights and reflectors of cars and huge screens for advertisement above the road are dominating this urban landscape piece. Numerous dazzles and rhythmic lights mirroring yellow and sometimes green spots also mark some patches in the puddles on the …

This artwork is painted in an expressive style that is mixed with quoted patches related to informal art and also parts with quite realistic figures. It highlights, through the use of complementary colors, the ignorance of climatic crises, which is still an actual problem on our highly endangered planet. It is symbolized by a wildfire and a tourist family that seems to enjoy quietly paddling on a lake while crossing the former beauty of nature, as …

The title says it all. This painting shows my formerly daily search for interesting rocks during geological fieldwork as a young master student. It seems I became one with nature. Fully motivated, curious, and adventurous on an exploration tour. In the center of the painting, only half of my face and the water bottle appear rather realistic, whereas the rest of the person is hidden in shadow. My blue workwear interferes with branches and leaves, …

My hidden studio is related to the house where I live. It is surrounded by a garden and a small forest. Only a few people know where I live, so it’s quite a secret. There I stay in close contact with nature: as in my previous work as a geoscientist exploring remote areas and also as an artist which I actually was all my life. So I appreciate the natural diversity and gives them expression …

We all know the pictures of beached whales around the globe, and sometimes crowds of people help them find their way back in the ocean. It makes sense to push them back to the waters, but the story in the painting is a different one: Here, however, this painting shows the beached bodies of shipwrecked refugees along the southern Mediterranean shorelines. Many died already before reaching their "European paradise," and the ones who survived are …

The theme of this work is the loss of nature. Nature is reduced to isolated islands within a man-made artificial environment. During the painting process, the nearly completed landscape painting of jungle-like floral structures was overprinted with magenta. Doing so, I destroyed the original work. This color reflects an artificial environment and contrasts well with the green colors of nature, which seems to be covered underneath. Only some circular patches are left. Many ideas from …

In this painting, floral structures symbolizing the nature are restricted to the margins of the canvas, whereas the center appears in an artificially appearing magenta color. The painting also covers the four faces of the stretcher frame. These 3-D appearances open various perspectives to the viewers. But it's obvious that the cancer-like destruction of our romantic landscapes will be lost forever soon.