Artist Bio
Kinga Britschgi

I live and work in Boise, Idaho at the moment. But it wasn't always so. I was born, raised and educated in Hungary. My sister and my grandmother still live there. 

I earned a degree in Elementary Education, including Art Education and also in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. For a long time I had a very hard time deciding which direction I wanted to take. In Hungary, it seemed to be teaching English and some art, in the United States, it is mainly art with some teaching. 

I try to make art a daily ritual or at least a daily engagement. Although I usually define myself as a collage-painter and block printer, I have mainly four areas of interest: collages (in a broad sense; as I am also attracted to assemblage, bricollage and such things), block printing, artist books and computer graphics. 

I create my pieces from "found objects." Mainly old ephemera, books, charms, photos, nature's treasures, fabric and a lot of other sources. I also have innumerable rubber stamps. I am a "metallic" fan: gold, copper, silver, bronze. 

Lately I have returned to some of my old college routines: oil paintings, some watercolor and pencil drawings. My favourite and always returning motif is the female nude in many, many forms. 

As I also write (unfortunately much less lately than I used to) I often use my writings as a starting and/or inspiring point. I create either a 'visual writing chunk' (when the actual words, their physical appearance, have vital parts in the finished piece) or merely an illustration for the chosen sentences. 

Recently, while I was drawing for one of my newer collages, I stopped and started to think: why do I not draw/paint a 'whole-story' picture? (You know: women are sitting in a sun-lit forest chatting; little cottage on a river bank or even a portrait; you know what I am talking about.) Why do I feel the urge of pasting bits and pieces to / at / below / above / through my seemingly unfinished drawings / paintings and finish them in this way, creating a collage? It is not because I could not paint or draw an 'epic' picture, I guess. It is because I do not think in a linear way, and because I always want to express much more than I ever could in any other 'linear' form. I am not saying other directions are wrong; what I mean is, that for the ultimate and only way of my self-expression is the collage form with its unbelievable freedom. 

I am a very slow artist; in this context it means that although collage seems to be a very improvisational form, for me it is a very, very serious, bittersweet battle: when I finish my piece I can tell you exactly why I have chosen a certain piece of paper or why I attached that label or why I positioned that rusty piece of metal just there. What I mean is, yes, even if I hate this term, my pieces do have some message; on the other hand I am the last person who expects anyone to 'go for' this message. But it is extremely important for me to create purposefully; to know what I do and why exactly I do that in that certain piece. I do believe that in this way I create something that is worth looking at, 'deeper' than a decoupage ("a surface decoration"). And I do believe that even if my 'message' cannot be discovered sometimes, the piece can put up with time for a long while and please people as it is being born out of a painful but extremely joyful creative process. 

I do not like the term, "fast and easy to make." I think it is always very hard to make something meaningful and in a lot of cases it is a long and frustrating process. But this is exactly what is most beautiful about being an artist. 

In the future, I am planning to go back to school and study printing and book arts.