Kim Reuter Stilles Licht

RURAL ENJOYMENT IN COLOR
Christoph Tannert
For those heading off into the landscapes of Kim Reuter,
the journey leads through gentle mountain ranges, emerging to satisfy explorative curiosity on tuff soil and
wooded basalt domes sculpted by streams of lava. Welcome to the volcanic Eifel! “People need something like
home,” says Kim Reuter, “places on which to alight, free from schmaltz and nostalgia, a place in which to be
both down-to-earth and universal.” 1
The painter lives with her husband and children Milli (thirteen) and Hugo (twelve) at the edge of Leudersdorf,
fifteen minutes from Blankenheim, twenty minutes from Gerolstein, and an hour away from Cologne. They
actually come from Cologne originally and were stranded here by coincidence a few years ago. What was intended
as a weekend retreat then evolved into a larger family home. “I love the Eifel region for its numerous
facets and its rough nature,” says the artist. “I enjoy the tranquil landscape of the juniper heaths and the dense
mixed woodland, there is nothing to compare with the lines of the hilly volcanic landscape, they reflect my
mood.” 2 Painting is a green pastime. The zeitgeist wears rubber boots.
Naturally, there are also other regions in which she likes to spend time—for example, at Lake Garda, on Spiekeroog,
in Denmark, and at the Atlantic—which is why she is understandably reluctant to be pigeonholed as
an “Eifel painter,” as if there is a special Eifel feeling, a typical Eifel viewpoint that could be used to identify an
“Eifel” artist, if it were not possible to pin them down with the aid of a few Eifel motifs. Who knows, maybe
she would never have even taken up landscape painting if her location had been a different one.
In 1965, Barnett Newman (1905–1970), the pacemaker of Color Field Painting, still saw the task of an artist as
that of creating a place in which a person can be secure, “he is there in order to be himself.” Newman made
reference to the human environment, which he attributed little value of its own, but which should animate the
observer to become visible. According to Newman, a social benefit could be derived from this self-isolation.
He lived for an ideal: “Hopefully my paintings have the impetus to give someone, as was the case with me, the
feeling of their own entirety, their own separateness, their individuality and, at the same time, their affinity to
others that are similarly detached.... Only then is it possible to understand others, when one has developed a
sense of their own being.” 3
Artists in the present day and age tend to take a more relaxed approach to their work, with a less pronounced
desire for self-assertion. For Kim Reuter, who is also less rigorous in her thinking, it is being together with her
family that provides her with the insight of being in the right place, a constant animation of her creative bond
with a specific place. With her feet planted firmly in the here and now, she extends her personality into her
art. A continuous presence in her pictures, her family enables her to develop a sense of security that in turn
promotes her self-awareness and grants her the openness with which to assimilate the world. She establishes
her oeuvre as a reflection of that which is occurring around her and within the realm of her family relationship.
„Am Morgen“, 2009
Eitempera auf Leinwand, 60 x 90 cm
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