Artist and coach of creativity

Uta Zorzi wrote about my work :
“Marina Büning explores worlds. The great, the infinitely great, who in the imagination forgets all boundaries and the small, the infinitely small, the single syllable of a word, a sentence of an idea, an idea of the world. Almost like a game, like a child forgetting the hours that change from one time to another, from one role to another, from one world to another. She creates small worlds in pocket size, protected from conscious relationships with the outside world. Or it conquers the entire room, the castle, the belly of the whale with a single gesture. Everything becomes possible.”

I arrived in Italy twenty years ago from Hamburg in Germany. From the big city to the beautiful countryside north of Rome, the Sabina Hills was my new home. Living in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nature, helped me develop my Art. In one way or another, while searching for new materials and ideas, I was deeply influenced by my new environment. So I worked with wool from the local sheep, stones found in the nearby river, branches, and anything that came my way and caught my interest. The Langobards’ stonework (a north European population who conquered Italy between 300 and 600)inspired me. Having found traces in a nearby church aroused my interest, and I started to research.

In my latest work, nature becomes more critical because of the hidden unknown, which might create fear and vulnerability that we “Humans” try to ignore or, worst to destroy. It is essential to go further and look beyond, but I can’t control this with my mind. I have to let go of and ago with that what comes and work on that.

I regularly held exhibitions in and around Rome, but I decided to stop for various reasons approximately ten years ago. Meanwhile, I started again. I began to teach Art in an American High school ( St. Stephen’s), so I had less time for my artwork. I am presently still teaching at two American Universities in Rome (AUR and Temple University) and concentrate less on sculpture and more on printmaking, drawing work, and photography. The camera was always a tool to document things, take photos of my work. Only recently it became a tool for my artistic expression.

Besides the teaching work in the American universities in Rome, I work online as a creativity coach, helping people to enter in their creativity. If you want to know more about that, look at my other website www.marinabuening.com