Dr. Ulrich Backes

How do I, as a physicist, come to produce art?

After a thorough talent test, I already knew as a teenager that I should become either a physicist or a designer. I decided to become a scientist and to continue to practice my creative-artistic side in my spare time. My love of craftsmanship with various materials helped me to design several lamps and pieces of furniture over the years. I prefer a very cool, understated, Bauhaus-like style. When designing, I was able to make full use of the more in-depth knowledge of materials I had gained during my physics studies.

In my job it is important to me to understand a product or a manufacturing process in its entirety. The mathematical modelling of real things, which is common in physics, helps me to do this. Over the last years I have successfully specialized in the development of sensors for motor vehicles. The optics used in such products are calculated with 3D light beam tracking programs (ray tracing). For the design of furniture and other objects in my hobby I have not used paper for years, but 3D design software.

Since my wife is also an art lover, we visited many exhibitions together. I discovered my passion for abstract art with a focus on very reduced representations of a three-dimensional detail, e.g. a corner of a room. With this discovery the loop to the artist was closed for me.

How do I work?

I start my designs with a three-dimensional inner image. This emerges, for example, when discovering a special shape, such as the corner of a house during a walk. But it can also be the impression of a nightly crime scene with fog. I try to imagine what minimal setting is needed to achieve an effect similar to that experienced. I like to reduce the details a bit more to challenge the viewer in his interpretation. I make the design in the 3D construction program. Then follows the setup of the lighting (like in a photo studio), and the coating of the object surfaces with a material. After calculating the image in the raytracing program, several correction loops (object, material, light) are made until an optimal image is created.

It is important to me to have full control over the result throughout the whole process. It is all the more surprising to me that some pictures are perceived completely differently by the viewer than I thought...

If control is so important, why do I paint at all?

The luminosity of the acrylic colours is superior to photo and digital prints. The colour space ( limitations of displayable colours) is also larger. There are also more modelling options. A photo is always flat, while a brush stroke has a three-dimensional texture, depending on the type. All these characteristics make painting highly attractive for me. But do I really want to leave a painting result to chance?

In 2012 I started to intensively deal with the basics of painting in my spare time. Of this, I spent two years studying the basics of colour pigment mixing and finally developed a computer software for it. Another two years passed with the self-study of pictorial effects. The first pictures were created as a manual exercise. After I could not get used to the uncontrolled application of paint by a brush, the next pictures were created in mask technique with opaque paint, partly again from computer sketches. I was satisfied with that. In painting courses I had the courage to cover the perfect colour surfaces with transparent (only partially controllable!) colours.

In the future I will risk further painting experiments with less control....

It would be nice to see you again. I would be even more pleased to receive criticism - be it positive or negative. You are welcome by email.