Life can be likened to a movie shown only once to a captive audience of one, a darkened auditorium in which the level of illumination is a decision for the solitary occupant. To see the light we must first acknowledge that we are in the dark.

I am a reluctant human being and society is my confinement, a prison in which the inmates have been convinced that really they are free. My gaolers are troubled by their own shallows, the fears they have of others are the fears they have about themselves cunningly repackaged to increase their legal appeal.

my primary interest lies in the processes of painting; my love for the materials, their techniques and the resulting surfaces. I find inspiration in the colour, texture and malleability of paint using a range of tools from syringes to piping bags to exploit the behaviour of paint and explore the relationships it create. the works incorporate my interest in the seductive nature of surface.

I went to art college for a year at the end of the 1970s but I fell out with my tutors because I was interested in photography and drawing. Kind of funny when you look at the way things turned out. But I never gave up taking pictures or drawing. The more you look, the more you see. Taking photographs is probably fundamental to the way I negotiate my way around.

Beate Gördes, was born 1961 in Herten, Germany. She studied fine art/painting, at the FH Cologne from 1987-1992. She is living and working as a freelance artist in Cologne. Her artistic work is multi-layered with unbordered media and technologies. Video and sound supplements her artistic work since 2006. She is represented in numerous exhibitions and participations in Germany and abroad.