“If you squint your eyes and look out at the horizon at dusk, it creates this dreamlike universe.”  Born and raised by the ever-changing sea surrounding the Danish island Bornholm, Anne Nowak draws inspiration from the horizon, the universe and everything in between.

In her current home in Copenhagen, however, the Danish artist barely has any art. Instead, Anne Nowak needs her home to be a place of relaxation – without any work-related distractions. And in that sense her home and working life as an artist are replicated in her art: Both is a balancing act.

In The Interstellar Collection, she focuses on the contrast between the saturated and the faint. Consisting of five different colours and dimensions the art prints draw in the eye and arise intrigue by providing no clear object. The pieces in The Interstellar Collection are, in Anne Nowak’s own words, incredibly simple. But in the simplicity lies a sense of something pure. The creating process has been a struggle, but to Anne Nowak, when the pieces finally appeared on the canvas, it could never have been any other way.

The Beauty Of Everything

Growing up Anne Nowak had an urge to create, but taking the leap into the artistic world required courage from the now well-renowned artist. “It was… difficult to choose a way of life that did not fit into the norm,” tells Anne Nowak. But the urge grew to a hunger that would not be satisfied. 

Today, she would not – actually could not – live without creating. “Creating art is like breathing. I live my art. It is my place of freedom,” says Anne Nowak and continues: “Sometimes when I am in my studio, creating, I feel like the happiest person on this earth.”

The art of Anne Nowak is highly entangled in her own course of life. “They represent happiness as well as grief – and both are equally beautiful. It is like that time a day in the Northern hemisphere, when the sun has set, just before it becomes dark,” she says and describes the kind of grey that encases the world. “It is all about finding the beauty. Even a cloudy day has its own kind of charm.”

The interplay between light and darkness of Anne Nowak’s life manifests itself through her art. It lets her pieces be approachable and she hopes that they invoke curiosity.

In Between The Stars

When gazing at the Milky Way you will notice an occurrence of seemingly empty space among the millions and millions of stars. This space, the in-between, is present in the works of Anne Nowak. From being completely saturated at the edges the endless pigments of colour slowly spread out across the canvas until it fades into a white space in the middle.

And it is in this movement between saturation and void, between contrasts that the beauty of Anne Nowak’s art emerges. “It is important to me to create these contrasts and to challenge the balance of them, not only in my art but also in life,” she says. “In the darkness, you will find depth and development however challenging it may be. But the light is equally necessary. It brings hope.”

Anne Nowak goes on to tell about her fascination with the universe and what made her choose to live the life of an artist: “When my father passed away, it created this opening towards the universe. And the same thing happened again when I gave birth to my daughter.” In these crucial moments of her life, Anne Nowak experienced the raw sensation of feeling lost and hopeful at the same time

“It is kind of a cliché but it is what life is really about: Knowing that you have been born and that you will one day die. It is indisputable and yet it is marked by a sense of the unknown. But therein lies the hope: The hope and kind of optimism in not knowing.”