Dark Waters

After a heavy, stormy summer day, like today, all I am feeling are the paintings of Werner Knaupp. Knaupp is a German painter and sculptor who lives in Nuremberg. Since 1964, he has regularly travelled, seeking extreme landscapes (deserts, volcanoes, mountains) in places such as the Sahara and the Antarctic, Hawaii, New Zealand and Iceland. The series below is of the Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar), an archipelago off the south coast of Iceland. "I paint what I know, not only what I see. The sea is the largest mass grave. The viewer is in the middle of my pictures. [The work] is so that he will be a little less afraid."

(photo of Knaupp by André De Geare)