The night sky and its phenomena are my hobby; as a member of the
Salzkammergut Astronomical Working Group (AAS),
I can gaze at the stars at the Gahberg Observatory, located at Sternenpark Attersee/Traunsee.
In 2024, I was able to observe the most wonderful auroras all night long in Norway. Being a professional sculptor,
I immediately searched for an appropriate form of expression to capture these fragile phenomena.
Initial attempts to depict the aurora's appearance and feel in wood reliefs were successful.
Below you see the night view of one of my first reliefs, depicting an aurora borealis I saw at Tromsø, Norway.
Then I discovered all-sky cameras on the internet, which allowed me to observe the
northern night sky even after my return to Austria. They are operated by research institutes
such as the Institutet för Rymdfysik in Kiruna, Sweden
or the camera by UAF at the Toolik Field Station in Alaska,
or joint productions such as AuroraMAX in Fairbanks, Canada.
This list is far from being complete. If you know good other web resources for watching Auroras, please get in touch with me.
I often sit for nights searching for beautiful images on these cameras broadcast over the internet.
From these live images, designs emerge, drawn directly onto a circular wooden disc.
Thanks to my memories of the experience in Norway, I can add the depth of the
luminous effect to the flat image, creating a realistic image that cannot be
created by other means.
The painting is done with acrylic paints; the objects are shellaced for
protection and finished with fluorescent paint.
