(Reading time 1.5 minutes) Enjoying time…endless. 

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

This reveling quote with its veiled origins (attributed to more then six different authors), goes a long way to describing what is at the heart of Martin Honisch’s great work.

Martin’s large canvases feel like a shared memory of human history. The best and worst events are depicted in vivid colour, with their familiar narratives and actors, yet they are bathed in the impossible. They are as seen through a dream.

His bold paintings could best be described as Magical Realism; a genre of art and fiction that expresses a primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements. His paintings are like Franz Kafka’s novel “The Metamorphosis”. Wherein the main character undergoes a grotesque mutation into a giant bug. Though we the reader, know this to be impossible, the character feels deeply familiar to us, we sense that this unthinkable metamorphose has already occurred privately within us.

And that is a what a Honisch painting is all about. Linking us to dreams, the shared human dream. Where reality takes root in the psyche, and not in what is outside of ourselves. We look at his paintings and are compelled to look ever inward.

Below: pictures from our recent visit to the painter and his wife Usha, in their home studio.