Art of the coast

The painter and graphic artist Ole West, born in 1953 in Wedel, Schleswig-Holstein, settled as a freelance artist on the East Frisian island of Norderney in the North Sea in 1984 after studying graphics and extensive study trips. The range of subjects covered by West's graphic art, which includes both hand drawings and prints, is broad. In addition to traditional genres such as landscape painting and still life, he is primarily interested in all subjects of the maritime. Again and again he returns to the depiction of lighthouses, fish, cutters, fishing cottages and other typical motifs of the North German coastal region. Wherever sea and land meet, this landscape becomes an artistic challenge for him.

If one looks for models, then the comparison to Horst Janssen and to Edward Hopper forces itself involuntarily. To the one he owes ideas for the technical realization, to the other contentwise inspirations. From these influences, West developed over the years a completely independent visual language, in which he merges his coastal motifs with the imaginary space of land and sea maps collage-like.

Ole West's works have since become so popular in the Ruhr region and Bavaria that the concept of a northern German "art of the coast"" is almost inevitably associated with his name.