ROXANA HARTMANN
VISUAL ARTIST AND WRITER
My work moves between painting and writing—two practices through which I register the present and explore the space between being alive and my memory. I’m drawn to what exists in between: the time that flows between the movement of my body while I’m in my art studio, the pause between words and the layers between surface and meaning. These subtle spaces—where memory, presence, and language intersect—form the ground of my practice.
Through color and language, I trace the intangible: identity, heritage, and the echoes that shape them. I explore how memory settles into form—into objects—and how meaning gathers through texture, repetition, and erasure, honoring what is partial, fragmented, and still unfolding. The chair is a constant object in my paintings. I’m obsessed with the shape and the volume of this element. At the same time, in the journey of trying to define who I am, I find in this object a place to observe, a pause and a presence to discover. The chair is the portal to my memories; it is the witness of my history. The chair is where I sit down to write, to draw, to have coffee, to talk and listen, to watch. The chair is there to be taken by my everyday clothes, my books and recollections. The chair knows the weight of my body and the rhythm of my breath.
More than looking up for visual references I enjoy researching how artists elaborate their thoughts. My attention pursues the artists whose processes are anchored in genuine analysis of their own life experiences.
My ongoing insistence on understanding the present through the transit of my body in time—with objects as symbols and language as a living, mutable resource—drives my movement across materials. I understand materiality as a site of transition, where concepts and questions take form—like the place I come from.
