Ulrike Zimmermann

Ulrike Zimmermann is an Australian artist who is deeply inspired by the beautiful earth and nature. During her artistic career, she has considered herself an impressionist.

Born into an artistic German family, her father a teacher and her mother an artist, her passion for art developed very early. From an early age she received private teaching in painting from her mother and grandfather, in addition to private art education from art teachers Karl Schulz and Klaus Peter Kruse. She later met her architect husband, Hans-G. Zimmermann, and studied interior design with him from 1972-1981. She emigrated to Australia in 1982 and was a member of Art Society Reinbek until then, and after emigrating to Australia she studied at the Adelaide Central School of Art from 2011 to 2014, focussed on Corporate Art.

Ulrike has fulfilled a long-time dream of using the earth and colours of Australia to do her work of nonrepresentational and Modern Art. She has used sands of different minerals, colours and textures collected by herself and friends from different parts of the country. Her painting begins with a laminated structure on marine ply. This supports its ground and all following layers of sands in different tones and colours of varying complexity. It is built up using the natural prehistoric alchemy to achieve its stability and appearance of solidity. In this way, she feels she has achieved her dream of an ageless impression of Australia.

Artist statement:

“I love my new country with its beautiful soils and its unique earth. My aim in these works is to give people the experience of being in Australia by composing my images using paint made from actual soil from different regions of the country. The work aims to produce the feeling of being part of the Australian landscape through its colour, paint media and composition by using paint made from the soils of this country the ancient nature of the earth vibrates through the work to the viewer and gives them a sensory experience of being in Australia."