Gabriele Niegelhell

Painting is more than just a passion for me. It is a journey of expression, connection, belonging, and beauty, and the attempt to put the awe and wonder of the outer and inner world onto canvas. My life course inadvertently uprooted me from my home, and the new one could never quite replace it. Now, I feel without a home regardless of where I am, yearning to mend the rip. This propels me to create places that make me feel whole, places of memories, places of connectedness, or just situations that capture me in the present moment, no matter where I am.
In my painting approach, I gravitate between contemporary impressionism and abstracted realism. While I still train my eyes on the physical world, my work increasingly shifts toward the space where sight gives way to feeling. I deviate from strict realism to capture the sublime experience of immersion—not just rendering a landscape but evoking the sensation of being enveloped by it. Driven by memories of times in nature when I felt true, alive and connected, I try to create places of being one with myself and at the same time connected to everything around me, which is also a reminder of how deeply we really are all connected.
By balancing the illusion of real-world light with intuitive abstraction, my paintings become meditative visual refuges—inviting you to connect with your own inner world, discover a sense of solace, offering moments of stillness and connection, or just experience the transcendent power of beauty.