Interview 2 | grithludwig

A translation from the Danish North-Art magazin.

A Portrait of Grith Ludwig, written by Karen Vind.

Soft as an Angel & Wild as a Lion.

By living close to an Indian Village in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where the Indians have a strong belief in Cosmic order, Grith Ludwig found the spirituality that she now spontaneously expresses on her canvas. An Artistic leap for a painter that has spent years of her life learning her trade in dept. She consciously uses her professional knowledge when she paints the unconscious.

Grith Ludwig is dynamic, both as a painter and as a person, whatever she wants to do, she does and have done ever since she was a little girl. She grew up on a large Island in Denmark called Amager, where she would go horseback riding along the beach together with some boys, and she never fell off.

Very early in life she experienced that when she followed her intuition the inner voice she always listen to, only something good happen, something that brought her from one meaningful experience to another by doing so she developed an unfailing believe in herself and her know how.

Strongly supported by her parents who raised her by the concept if you truly want to do something you can. Since she already spent a lot of time drawing and as a young girl she announced that she wanted to be an artist, they accepted her wishes and enrolled her in art school.

Close Relations

Already as a seventeen year old, she travelled alone across the USA to Hollywood, invited by a young American actor who fell in love with her in Copenhagen.

This trip moved her directly into an environment artist and film people who kept in touch and she connected with them again years later when she once lived there again.

These close relations, she now experiences as a deeper purpose since she left so spontaneously from Copenhagen back then.

She is completely sure. Has never thought that anything was "Just" a coincidence in her life.

Nor that she shortly there after should end up in Toronto, Canada, where she in 1973 was accepted in Central Technical Art school where she 3 years later graduated with honours.

For a period of time she worked in a big advertising agency, but she needed to develop herself as an independent artist and when she got the chance to go to Colombia, South America, she took it.

The experience of the Colombian jungle and meeting the local Indians became a major turning point in her life. By intuition she felt as if she had "come home".

A true revelation

In spite of poverty and being hunted the Indians who lived in wooden huts close to the ocean lived a strong spiritual life.

They had a deep belief of faith in the cosmic order and devoted them self to the greatness and the mysteries of life just as she always did herself.

And the colours, both the ones they used for ritual purpose and daily use were exactly the colours she used herself when she was painting.

Spiritual all the time

It was not strange, that after spending time with the Indians, Grith Ludwig knew what she wanted to do with herself, her life, her art and has ever since followed an inner demand to her spiritual feelings guide her when she is painting.

One of her friends, an Art dealer in Los Angeles had several times suggested that she should travel to Mexico to paint and exhibit her work, and by the end of May 1995 she left.

First she went to Los Angeles and later on a long Journey through Mexico to Cuernavaca, where she meet an older Danish / American couple, who invited her to rent a bungalow with a studio upstairs on their property.

The Danish women were a painter herself an they all developed a close relationship.

When Grith Ludwig is talking about her work and her life in Cuernavaca, where she also got many Indian friends, she moves in time and space.

She is in the Mexican town: Whenever I stand in this total silence on a mountaintop or in the middle of chaos in the city, I have a feeling of being home.

It does not matter if I‘m painting, going dancing, meeting the locals, or going to an Indian village nearby where there is this very strong mystic feeling, I am then in this constant state of happiness. It is spiritual all the time. I found complete equilibrium within myself and I have not felt so alive, since I was in the Jungle of Colombia. I identify myself with something that is so old, that I have not lived in it myself, at least not in this life but still, when I am standing in it, I feel that I have been a part of it without being able to put it into words.

I can go home and paint everything that I take in, both the spiritual and the mystic, and it opens up for something, that is very deep. If l give myself enough time, when I am sitting in front of the painting I can then move inside of it, and it is this feeling of happiness, almost like being a little child, that has an experience of something new. But at the same time it is actually something I conscious/unconsciously feel I know, and I get excessively happy, is very, very glad all the time.

Mexican Spirituality

Grith ludwig goes on: I still use the same scale of colours, but in the paintings that I painted in Mexico the colours are now stronger and more glowing. Already a month before, when I was still in Copenhagen looking very much forward to go to Mexico, where I never had been before, something very unusual happen.

I was painting a small series of six paintings, and the depth of these colours was totally different than the lighter a bit "dessert like" pastel colours that I was using at the time. Without thinking about it, and without having any kind of measure, it was warm, strong and sharp colours that came onto the canvas, and again: I knew that it was something. I had known before. I cannot express this in words, but somewhere along the process, while I stood painting before I left, I felt completely sure, that this is something you are going to meet. And I did. But I must say, that I got a little more than surprised, when it turns out, that I through my window in the studio in Cuernavaca, has a complete direct view to an old monastery, with a dark gate and across, a motive, I already had painted back in Copenhagen.

One of my friends said right away, when he saw my paintings from Cuernavaca: Your expression has become very soft. That comes from, if I should analyse it myself, the constant inspiration my experience in Mexico. The intense life and the intense colours, that exist everywhere, is for me, strong and at the same time an expression of Mexican spirituality.

It is like flying. You are on the top of things, and when you develop yourself and continue with all these colours, then there is constantly a door that opens up - a door, that actually opened up, before I left Copenhagen.

On the Cemetery

The strongest and most inspiring place, I have experienced as an artist, is the cemeteries in Cuernavaca and Tepoztlan.

They are so fantastic, that I could paint motives from there all my life, and I jumped around, took pictures and was in one big state of happy inspiration, when I went there the first time.

I have been visiting cemeteries since I was a child. It is the peace, call it soul peace, that fascinates me and the mystery of it - also back home in Denmark, where we have some very beautiful cemeteries, that I like a lot. And I especially love one by the name: The Assistens cemetery.

It is gorgeous because it is wild, with old, ramshackle angles and graveyards that are beautiful, exactly because they are ramshackle. Something that looks like it is about to die, connects very well with the thought of souls, that are flying around in the universe.

The ageing, the old, the antique and the mysterious - something, that happened many years before I was born, it attracts me infinitely.

When I step into the cemetery in Cuernavaca, it is my colours, I see. The graveyards are painted in turquoise, purple, pink, pale blue, yellow and so on, all my favorite colours, and I go crazy. It is unbelievable uplifting with such an amount of colours in a place of death. Actually, I think there can be something alive about something, that is dead.

Again the old, the antique, the ramshackle. Here at the cemetery in Cuernavaca, it has a great many little graveyardwith lots of angles and mini monuments and little tiny houses and castles, it is in some kitchen way something, that we are not used to see in Europe, since the old graveyards fall into decay in the middle of everything. For me a gravestone, that is decaying on the back and has developed colours from nature into the decay of it, something very beautiful that inspire me deeply. But I never paint on the spot, and I do not make sketches I am just very busy being inspired, me deeply. But I never paint on the spot, and I do not make sketches I am just very busy being inspired, intercept, devour everything and be excited.

Above the entrance of the cemetery in Cuernavaca there is a sign that reads: "The place where the suffering ends, and the memories begins". - isn´t it beautiful? That reminds me, that I one day asked one of my Mexican friends: Why do you think they build such colourful little houses and mini castles on their gravestones? And he answered: "I think, it is because, when their loved one dies, they should have fine place and live well, since a lot of them did not have that when they lived in this world - a little castle, where they theme self can go and dream a little, light candles and drink a tequila together with the ones they came to remember." I am sure that he is right. Over here the cemeteries are not the same as in Denmark a serious place, where you clean a little around the gravestone, place a bucket of flowers and may stand for a minute and think about the deceased before you go home. In Mexico the cemetery is an open, warm place, where everyone can go and be together with the dead, for instance on their birthday, while they eat and drink on the gravestones, as if it was a family dinner at home. Before I left Denmark, I heard of, how all the Mexicans every year, on The Day of the Dead in November, are celebrating the dead by eating and drinking in the cemeteries, and I was very happy, since I knew I was going to be over there exactly by November.

The Day of the Dead

I was living in the mountains of Cuernavaca, and there the Indians kept a very old tradition alive, but only in a few Indian areas of Mexico. If a person is dead within one year, the family of the dead person opens up their doors in the evening of the day of the dead, so everyone can come and celebrate the death of that house - also people they don´t know, and I was lucky to be invited by some friends who knew which houses was to be open.

The bonfires outside the houses is showing the way, and I was completely hypnotised by the view of the brightness of the procession on the way to the different homes.

There were fire and flowers everywhere. You arrive at the houses with flowers and candles, and the family members are standing in the doorway and say thank you and welcome, and invite you inside for food and drinks.

In honour of the deceased the biggest rooms in the house are transformed into colourful rooms full of light. They are full of flowers and burning candles and a beautiful, stunningscent of the burning incense. In a prominent place there is an alter, a coffin, or a raised platform, where they put their close and personal things, and their food and drinks, such as: chicken, coffee and Tequila.

The most dominant colour is purple, the spiritual colour, which is always used at funerals.

But there are a lot of flowers in all kinds of colours, and the ambience in the room is, what I would call stunningly bright. At the same time as you feel a great respect for death and a great peace with the many people who are gathered you also get an intense feeling of happiness, which is difficult to explain, but it is a completely natural part of the special ambience, that arise in such spiritual surroundings. There is also music.

They have musicians, who are playing and singing and everything come together as something that looks like one great love for both life and death.

Building alters

It is the most beautiful experience I have ever known. The love and happiness, that you fell, in spite of, poverty, distress and oppression, you meet everywhere in Mexico, was a fantastic expression that night up in the mountains, and I feel it was a big present for me to be able to be a part of this ceremony. To think, that it is possible to feel the intensity of happiness about life in the middle of grief and death, and at the same time show the deepest respect.

For what you call god or the universe.

Ever since I got home, it occurred to me that I all of my life, without thinking much about it, have been building small altars, which looks like the Mexicans, in my own home.

I always have some kind of still life set up in memory of people. The beautiful old watch that I inherited from my grandmother, and other little things from her, It can also be other things, for instance, small gifts from my friends from all over the world, that I love and miss very much. The two things that I always have standing around: Angels and lions.

They are very important in my life, since I am just as close connected to the softness of the angels, as to the wildness of the lions.