a new creature
art & interview: Jörn Peter Budesheim
too long I held the river back, muted lilies, buried saplings before their time. rain patters gently in the old rhythms, but autumn stirs a new creature. what is the shape of fearless, she asks. when will I mirror in fullness, that warm, saffron sky? Saraswati Nagpal
autumn brings my favourite time of the year in India – festival of the goddesses, nine nights of immersion with community in the sacred feminine. the season’s shift feels like we are all waiting with bated breath for something in us, as a collective, to change. how long before we choose love?
last week, we featured my (Saraswati’s) debut poetry collection ‘Drench Me in Silver’ (Black Bough, 2025) here, with a generous review by Marcelle Newbold and Q&A with me from Jai-Michelle. we are very excited about the online launch for BIOPHILIA on September 26th, Friday at 7pm CEST to which you are warmly welcome. to attend and receive the link, please email us at thewingedmoonmagazine (at) gmail (dot) com
this week, we are honoured to bring you the work of award-winning artist Jörn Peter Budesheim from Kassel, Germany. His blend of the everyday and the surreal imbues each piece with an arresting ambiguity and symbolism. Jörn’s art has been previously published in our print issue HINTERLAND and included here, alongside other pieces he has generously shared, and his refreshingly honest and down-to-earth answers to our questions!
Tell us a bit about yourself and your artistic process, why do you make art?
Oh, that’s a difficult question to answer. Basically: just like that – it’s just the way I’m made. A colleague of mine had a real awakening experience: at a Beuys exhibition, she realized she wanted to do something like that herself. I can’t really claim anything like that. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. I can’t say exactly when it started. That’s just how I am.
But the question can also be understood in another way: if you ask “why” – meaning in terms of purpose, reasons, or justification – it becomes even harder. I think this is a question that occupies most artists. Why art at all? Is it necessary? Could we do without it? Does it contribute anything, should it even, must I be critical, take a position … and so on.
Here’s my attempt at an answer: I think it has something to do with being human. Humans are beings who ask about themselves: Who am I? What is my place in reality? We all form an image – oops! – of ourselves that we use as a point of reference, consciously or unconsciously.
And, of course, art is part of that. But it doesn’t do it “discursively” like philosophy, or empirically or theoretically like the natural sciences; it does it aesthetically, intuitively, narratively, playfully, mysteriously, fascinatingly … I think that’s exactly why I make art.
What inspired the pieces featured in our magazine?
The Bear: The idea came to me during an autumn walk, when the leaves had just started to fall. Suddenly, I had this image in my head: a bear climbing a tree to save the leaves from falling. Why exactly, I don’t know. I immediately began to put a few small lines of poetry together in my mind, and from that, the drawing emerged. I can’t just draw bears from memory, though, so I found a suitable reference online and worked from that.
The Sheep: This drawing developed in several stages. I belong to a group of artists who meet once a month outdoors to draw. The tree in this drawing came from one of those sessions in Wilhelmshöhe Park here in Kassel – it was a wonderful summer day, I remember that clearly. Later, I usually revise the drawings I make during these sessions. For this one, I first painted the lower, ocher-colored section and made the tree – or rather its foliage – a bit denser. Then the drawing seemed finished … but somehow not quite. At some point, I came across an older sketch of mine, inspired by Dürer’s famous engraving Melancholia. That’s when I decided to add the sheep to the drawing.
What do you do to nourish your artistic talent?
I nourish it simply by practicing my art :-)
What have you got coming up - any projects or publications we should look out for?
At the end of October, I will be participating in a large group exhibition in Kassel. Fourteen artists will be showing various works at the “Hallenbad Ost” – a former indoor swimming pool that is now used as an event and exhibition space, and which was one of the venues of the last documenta – all centered around the theme “Water Carpet.”
Kirsten Uchman, an artist from Kassel, and I are presenting a joint project there. I will be showing some drawings inspired, in the broadest sense, by the Orient as the origin of various myths. Kirsten Uchman works with painterly objects that are partially – abstractly and freely – based on the poem Ein alter Tibetteppich by Else Lasker-Schüler.
Our works, like almost all other pieces in the exhibition, will not be displayed on the walls, but on the gray concrete floor where the pool once was – almost like a “laid-out carpet.”
In addition, I will also be taking part in October in the gallery festival of Kassel’s Südstadt, which has been held annually since 2009. There, I run a small producers’ gallery together with eleven other artists. This year, the gallery artists as well as its supporters, who are themselves creatively active, will give visitors a small insight into their work.Where can people find you? www.budesheim.art budesheim.blogspot.com https://sites.google.com/view/meine-documenta facebook.com/joern.budesheim www.instagram.com/j.p.budesheim
thank you for enjoying Jörn’s art and reflections with us. we hope you will share it with other readers.
next week, Jai Michelle will send out the newsletter for paid subscribers. you can sample a previous one here, and perhaps consider a paid subscription. also - we’d love to see you at the Biophilia launch this Friday at 7pm CEST - a great line-up of the published poets reading their work…
until then…
Saraswati and Jai Michelle
read more about today’s artist here:
Jörn Peter Budesheim was born in Marburg in 1960, studied art in Kassel until 1986, where he has lived ever since. He received the Kassel Cultural Award, was on the board of the documenta forum (2016–2022), and is a member of the Kunstbalkon gallery. From 2019 to 2023, he was involved in the Hugenottenhaus, an art venue in Kassel, and has been a member of the artist collective Naturkunde since 2021. Numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad since 1978. Jörn Budesheim is a draughtsman; what counts is beauty and poetry. His subject is man in his reality.