Maria Ohmeyer - Meeting with an Artist, Sept. 1981 (by
Elfriede Lenk)
My closer acquaintance with Maria Ohmeyer had started in
1972. Her wish, to portrait my five year old son, followed some visits in
her studio. She opened in black trousers, complemented with a
torquoise-coloured blouse, the hair styled in her very own way, covered with
a light veil which she draped in a, for us unusual way, over her red-blond
hair. The red lacquered finger-nails faded beside all these colour stains on
her hands - from the picture she was already painting. Colour-stains
belonged to her, as well as the infinite number of keys on a crude bunch
which she always was carrying with her twisted round a hand. High-heels and
an elated walk as well as a soft wag in her eyes gave her a youthful
charisma. At this moment it was very difficult to believe that Maria Ohmeyer
was 76 years old. Passionately she was moving through the rooms of her old
furnished flat, to show her oil paintings, sometimes four or five-times
staggered and on walls leaning. Meanwhile she opened lockers and cases which
brimed over with her dear loved rough drafts.
"You know, rough drafts are the immediate experience.
Experience capability is the core of art, this seed is shaping up to a
baloon . Sometimes rough drafts are for me more valuable than a finished
picture." While she was admiring the orange of a gladiolus on a colour rough
draft, she already pointed at portraits of local vinegrowers, farmer�s wives,
added little humorous stories and didn�t leave me time to admire all these
children-portraits. Many local motives, landscapes of the Weinviertel,
countless flower paintings, she indefatigably put on the easel, to have a
better look at them. Suddenly she said, "I am living with my pictures, if
I had to seperate from them, that were like if someone would undress my
shirt over my head. I would feel naked." This is certainly an
explanation, why she didn�t sell any pictures. In front of her husband�s
portrait Alphons v. Ohmeyer, a general who was 20 years older than herself,
she starts to tell parts of her lifestory - about her husband whom she lost
because of a traffic accident after a 29 year old marriage. She also tells
about her only son, who died at an age of 20 in the Second War. Suddenly a
very different Maria Ohmeyer stands in front of me - a vulnerable, sensitive
woman and mother. Low voiced she says, while turning away from her son�s
portrait: Everything what we are, is our will, it keeps me alive. I�ve
struggled through to see the positive in everything, that has kept my sense
of humour. Art has helped me, to bear all the lonely hours." Without a
transition she tells about being related with Kubin because of her father
Leonard Schmidt, who came from Nikolsburg. She is really proud of this
relationship. Out of the first visits a friendship developed. I visited the
artist more and more often. I was allowed to read all her many poems and "written
thoughts".
To understand and affirm the sense of her artistic life,
to cope with the loss of her family, to bear the loneliness and ultimately
understand God - that all has formed this wife and has found its expression
in her poems and pictures. I kept looking forward to her desultory
passionate, always ingenious, sometimes even homorous, style of telling.
Once she looked at her "Pieta" and said, "Can you imagine
what I suffered when I painted the face of Holy Mary? I could have never
painted it this way, without the loss of my own son."
On September 5, 1981 the artist was already 85 - no colour-stains on her
hands any more, a dusty easel with dried up oil-colours, the last picture
dates from 1973. She still has an open door for every visitor and gladly
shows her pictures. Many times she herself stands gazing in front of her
works and says, "God, how was I able to do all that, is that all really
from me?"
She has finished her combat as an artist. Her remaining strength she
needs now to cope with her evening of life.
Elfriede Lenk, September 1981 (Translation by G.
Wlaschitz)
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