ABSTRACT
Traveling to remote landscapes all over the world, Ulrike Arnold creates abstract paintings with earth materials on massive canvases. Using the landscape as her studio in what could be called a dialogue with the earth, Arnold's work elicits the beauty and diversity of earth materials, which she believes is beyond measurement and classification. For her contribution to the book, Arnold welcomed the president of the German Soil Science Society, Thomas Scholten, to her Düsseldorf studio to discuss the origins of the color pigments in her work. Over the course of their dialogue on soil formation processes, they worked on a painting together. The dialogue thus became two in one: a discussion about the different and similar approaches to earth as well as a creative conversation on canvas. The resulting painting was presented at the German Soil Science Society's annual conference in 2015 in Munich. The dialogue was moderated, shortened, and finalized by the author Bettina Dornberg.
