Marianne Thoermer

Can you describe your work in three words?
Intimate, textural, evocative.

Your practice has involved a wide range of media over the years, including monotypes, ceramics and large-scale textile installations. You took a ten-year hiatus from painting before returning to the medium in 2021. What motivated you to come back to painting? 
Painting has always felt like my first language, as I was classically trained and introduced to art through it from a very early age. To me, it’s the most intuitive and natural way of navigating the world. Working in other media over the years allowed me to develop a broader sense of materiality and a more textural, sensory approach — which I’ve now brought back into painting. When I returned to painting in 2021, I felt ready to continue a conversation that had been unresolved for years. Early on, I felt my paintings lacked the presence to truly move the viewer, so I explored more tactile ways of working. Now, with the knowledge I’ve inherited from other media, the works have gained substance, urgency, and a presence that can emotionally engage the viewer. Rediscovering this urgency has been both a return to my roots and a way of moving forward with a deeper, more resonant practice.

Over the past decade you’ve been based between Germany and the UK. You’ve been living in Berlin for the last six years, but you’ve recently relocated to Yorkshire. Does place play an important role in your practice? Has relocating had an impact on your work?
Over the last ten years I have traveled frequently and lived between the UK and Germany, moving back and forth. Working has always allowed me to reconnect with myself, so I never felt restless, as I could always return to the inner conversations within my practice. Berlin had a very different energy, encouraging me to work on larger formats and explore dynamic, tactile materials. Now, being fully settled in Yorkshire, with the moors nearby and the ability to take long walks, I can engage with these conversations more deeply and focus on my work in a quiet, intimate way. The rugged landscape, the blackened houses, and the traces of the former mining industry, including the pits and the moors, have all left an imprint on me and continue to shape the mood, texture, and energy of my work.

Your paintings have a dreamlike quality, often built using blurred lines and fluid brush strokes which create the atmosphere of a memory that you can’t quite recall. Can you tell us more about your painting technique?
I don't have one fixed painting technique that fits all images — it really varies from work to work. Some paintings are built up slowly over time, layer by layer, allowing the image to gradually find its place through this steady process. Others, like the Dirty Dishes series, begin differently: I apply an initial layer of paint, let it dry, and then sand it back to create a first texture, almost like establishing the core memory of the painting. Once that surface is revealed, I apply thicker layers of paint and then wipe them away quickly using cloths, my fingertips, or Q-tips. It becomes a process of pushing the image forward and then chiseling it back again. 

Your upcoming solo show at Canopy Collections HQ is titled Periphery. Can you tell us more about the title?
The title The Periphery reflects my interest in the edges — spatial, social, and psychological. These paintings emerged during my maternity leave, a period of stillness and close observation, when my attention turned to what surrounds me: the overlooked gestures, quiet domestic scenes, and small details that often go unnoticed. Across Periphery, I explore what it means to inhabit or observe from the outer frame, where inside and outside, light and shadow, and presence and absence become fluid. It’s a perspective that encourages a slower, more attentive way of looking and reveals the depth and complexity within the ordinary.

There is often a collision of past and present in your work. Where does your imagery come from?
In the past, I mainly worked with found images — photographs sourced from flea markets, family archives, or collections shared with me by friends. I often created my own imagery based on this found material, exploring how memory and history intertwine through what’s been left behind. For this exhibition, however, I worked differently. I began using live models and photographs I took myself, responding directly to what was happening around me. Only one painting, The Arrangement, is based on found imagery, and it’s the only place where the past visibly collides with the present. The idea of the periphery felt so immediate and personal that I needed to create a body of work grounded in what was right in front of me — the everyday, the present moment. 

This series of work includes several still life and portraits of the everyday, including knives, bowls and dirty dishes. What was your influence for this?
I was drawn to this motif because it was right in front of me and carried a quiet presence. As ordinary objects, knives, bowls, and dirty dishes reveal traces of human activity — how they’ve been used, cared for, or neglected. At the same time, the motif offers a contrast to, for example, Flemish still lifes, with their polished, carefully arranged displays of flowers, fruit, and tableware. These are more blunt, candid images, and I think that honesty is part of their appeal — it’s something everyone can relate to.

Your piece “The Arrangement” is based on an archival photograph taken at Askham Grange prison nursery in Yorkshire. How did you come across this image and what about it inspired you to produce this painting?
I came across the image in a book at a charity shop, and it really struck me. You can see the figures quietly setting the tables, but the shadows on the walls give a sense of something deeper, a kind of psychological tension. I then found out it was taken in Askham Grange, a women’s open prison with a nursery. The photo shows staff prepping tables for the children, and the place actually has one of the best ratings — it’s not grim at all. It’s so well-regarded that even staff send their own kids there. One figure in the photograph casts a shadow over another, and in a way, it reminded me of how a newborn casts a shadow over you. As you serve someone in your profession, you’re also serving your child in a different way. There’s a sense of responsibility, attention, and care that overlaps, and it felt like a subtle echo of that experience. I chose this image while I was early in my own experience of motherhood. I wouldn’t say motherhood is like imprisonment, but there are parallels — a sense of restriction, of negotiating your place in a new role. There’s a deeper psychological layer in the work that really resonated with me at that time.

Are there any particular artists who have inspired your recent body of work?
There’s quite a long list of artists whose work resonates with me, but it’s less about direct influence and more about recognising the conversations they have within their work and seeing echoes of that in my own. From there, it becomes about finding my own solutions within the paintings. I’m drawn to the innocence, textural quality, and powerful yet simple use of colour in Clara Gesang-Gottowt’s work; the dreamlike, ghostly atmosphere of Eugène Carrière’s paintings; the dynamism and fluidity in Anna Freeman Bentley’s application of paint; and the deeply psychological and poetic sensibility in Victor Man’s work.