The subjects in Katrin's paintings carry intense emotional and surrealistic content. Much of this manifests as consequences of her own painful experiences of abuse. Katrin's experience as a journalist also is strongly present in her work as a desire to "tell a story". At the same time she creates a sort of balance through placing herself as a protagonist, adding biographicial perspectives.

Alvarez uses the recurring imagine of a box in which people appear trapped inside. Boxes, mental schemes, psychic prisions; every living being separated from the others in a series of stagnant compartments.

Inspired by a true story, In the Beginning there was Woman, shows the cold blue body of a mother who after giving birth was not capable of establishing contact with her newly born child. With eyes blindfolded, she is kept from looking at the baby. Arriving to the child are only the thoughts of the mother, represented by a sort of transparent insect. The child sleeps in unknown suffering. Mother and son, even though not connecting appear to be unitied in a sad destiny of uncommunicable suffering.

This artwork could seem to be a type of elaboration of suffering which moves toward healing but the artist herself explains that painting has never been a type of theraputic process for her, but rather an strong unstoppable impulse that has accompanied her all her life and which she "needs". It is her way of "being" in the world.

In the painting Virgin, the content proposes a different sensation as the wounded woman is being "sown up" by the fish. Animals, both in the life and the work of the artist have an invaluable importance. Innocent as children, they bring their benificial and curative energy. Symbols of freedom, like fish and birds, in their silence, know how to lovingly assist the woman.

Painful Realities of Human Relationships refers directly to the relationships between men and women in our culture. Alvarez denounces that which has been called "female emancipation" seeing frequently in this behavior a desire by women to create a situation of superiority over their male counterparts. This has lead many men to feel reduced to being closed into a box of inconsideration, misunderstanding and frustration as they search to re-define their relationships with women.

"I see myself as a journalist, describing life in colors instead of words. Both, the owerwhelming beauty of existence and it's cruel darksides - the whole range of beingness."
	German artist, Katrin Alvarez opens her heart and soul during an evening talk with art lovers at the ARTROM Home Gallery. video : Peter Lowrey

Please take time to visit the artist's website at: www.katrin-alvarez.de