My name is Katrin Hinterholzer, and I'm a 26-year-old Tyrolean artist. After completing my master's degree in elementary school teaching, I decided not to pursue that career and instead focus entirely on painting. I'm extremely grateful that I can now pursue this activity full-time and make a living from my art. I consider getting up every morning and looking forward to the day a great gift.

​

 

Nature as inspiration
The first COVID-19 lockdown had a profound impact on my painting. Through isolation, I learned to perceive and appreciate nature more closely. Having already painted a mountain, I view it completely differently in reality. I perceive the nuances more consciously and discover colors that one often wouldn't expect to find in nature.

My first major exhibition took place in September 2022. I was able to exhibit my paintings in a 50-meter-high summit cross in the Pillersee Valley. I painted mountain landscapes from the region, focusing primarily on the mountains visible from the summit.

 

​

Triggering emotions with painting
My goal is to capture special moments in the mountains with my paintings. Be it the last rays of sun on the peaks, the changing colors of the sky at sunset, or clouds enveloping the rocks. I spend my free time chasing these moments and love immortalizing them in my medium. Fittingly, the title of my last exhibition was: "Colorful Dance of the Peaks - Picturesque Mountain Landscapes in the Play of Light."

 

​

Food painting

In addition to mountain landscapes, in recent months I've also become interested in painting food, such as fried eggs and bacon. I'm fascinated by the colors, textures, and patterns that are usually not noticeable at first glance. The often smooth, wet, or greasy skin of food also creates lighting effects that I try to incorporate into my paintings. I base my work on photographs and then paint the object in my own realistic style.

 

In both my work, landscape painting and food painting, my goal is to open the eyes of my audience. We live in an environment that many in this world can only dream of, yet have forgotten how to perceive and appreciate it accurately. Special moments, such as the mountains' various hues, simply pass us by. These are precisely the moments I try to capture and convey to people. In my food painting, I specifically take photos of everyday foods, such as the aforementioned "fried egg" or "bacon," and analyze them for their structure and the colors created by the light. Through my painting, I try to encourage viewers to recognize the extraordinary in these everyday objects. For example, until I began this painting practice, I was unaware of the almost landscape-like structure that the upper skin of a piece of bacon has.