Collecting by feeling, not by name
Presence Summer Collection | Offline Hour
I was at an exhibition again recently, standing in front of a painting and talking – pointing out a colour decision, a tension in the composition, the way one small area seemed to hold the whole piece together. Afterwards, a couple I didn't know came up to me. They said how lovely it was to hear someone talk about art that way. I told them they should have joined in. They laughed, a little embarrassed, and said they wouldn't have known what to say.
I hear that sentence often – at exhibitions, and just as much in my own studio. People walk in, look at a painting, and apologise before they've said anything: I don't know anything about art, I can't say anything here. My answer is always the same. You don't need the vocabulary first. Let the painting work on you before you try to explain it – notice whether it pulls you in or pushes you away, whether it calms you or unsettles you – then try to put that into your own words, however simple. The art history can come afterwards, and it's worth learning. But the first, quieter job is simply to notice what a work does to you.
What would you notice, if you gave a painting that kind of time – and tried to describe it, in your own words?
Most advice about collecting art starts with names: which artist, which movement, which decade. I have never chosen a piece that way – not the ones I own, and not the ones I paint.
What I ask instead is simpler: What do I want this room to do to the people in it? Do I want them to arrive and exhale, or do I want them to feel awake, alert, a little charged? A painting chosen for its reputation can still leave a room cold. A painting chosen for the energy it holds rarely does.
I see this most clearly in the spaces I work with directly. The same collection can read as calm in one office and as energy in another – not because the work changed, but because the room, the light and the people in it did. That is not a decorating decision. It is closer to a decision about atmosphere: what should this place say, before anyone reads a single word on the wall.
This isn't new, either. Long before there were categories to sort against, private collections were already built this way – chosen for resonance, not consistency. It just means reputation and history are not where I start.
Presence Summer Collection | Offline Hour
In the studio, the works for arte Wiesbaden are taking up space – finished or nearly finished, standing against the walls, waiting. This week, moving between them with my coffee the way I do every morning, I noticed something about the room itself: how bright it is. Light catching warm cream tones from every wall, the whole space feeling open, almost luminous.
INC Art Fair Dornbirn/Austria Winter 2026
It stopped me, because I remember standing in this exact spot last year, and the room felt nothing like this. Back then, my studio was full of UN-GROUND – a collection built from many dark layers, because it had to be. It came out of moments I had actually lived through: doctors who looked past my pain because it didn't fit their textbook. Dark layers that told the truth about what that does to you. But it wasn't only dark. I heard from people who had lived under loud, dismissing voices themselves, and who recognized something in those paintings – the exact moment the ground comes back under your feet, once you've pushed the toxic ones aside. It gave courage, because it never pretended the fall hadn't happened.
This year, in a time of far too much screentime and far too few real moments, it's Presence Summer filling the room instead – the noticeably more radiant sub-collection within Presence, and the studio looks exactly like that collection feels. That's what I'm starting this autumn with.
This will be my first time showing Presence Summer in this format – works chosen and arranged not only to be looked at individually, but to hold a shared energy across a booth. It is the same question as always, just at a different scale: not "which pieces", but "what should this space feel like when someone walks up to it".
Presence Summer Collection | Summer Unplugged
What is inspiring me right now
A book
How Art Can Change Your Life by Susie Hodge caught me for a simple reason: an art historian, someone trained to talk about movements and periods, chose instead to write about art through emotion – organising the book from anger to happiness, meeting the viewer exactly where they are rather than starting with names or eras. It is the same shift I keep coming back to myself: looking first at what a work does to you, before asking what it is.
https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/how-art-can-change-your-life-softcover
A read and something for the ears
Screenshot from MoMa Magazine
MoMA's magazine asked Misty Copeland – the groundbreaking ballerina – about the artworks that moved her body, mind and spirit. Not analysed through art history, but through what they actually did to her, physically. A rare way to hear someone talk about art.
https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/1425
A little pause
Screenshot from violabeuscher.com
I am a tactile person – you can see it in my paintings, and I love it when people feel the urge to touch them rather than just look. It shows up in small daily rituals too: sitting outside with a coffee or tea, looking out over the forest, a cup in my hand that actually feels good to hold. This season, that cup is from Viola Beuscher, a ceramicist here in Frankfurt – a piece from her Happy Edition, lovely for recharging. Every piece is fired individually, so no two look quite the same, and once an edition sells out, it doesn't come back. Exactly the kind of object I want in my hand during a break.
https://violabeuscher.com/collections/happy-edition
A watch list
No single film this time – instead, a list I've been enjoying: Christie's rounded up the best films about art, and it felt like the right thing to hand you at the start of a new season. Scrolling through it, I was happy to rediscover The Draughtsman's Contract (1982, dir. Peter Greenaway) – I found it genuinely brilliant years ago, and it's put me in the mood to work through more of Greenaway's films. And right at the top of my own list now: At Eternity's Gate, Julian Schnabel's film about Van Gogh, which I've been meaning to watch for far too long.
https://www.christies.com/en/stories/best-films-about-art-4be4c9a9d17d41f287270e7101e4ad6b
A sound
Fitting for an issue full of art films, my husband – known to many as @der_vinylfluencer on instagram – picked something decidedly artsy this time: the Vinyl Me, Please edition of The Lemon of Pink by The Books.
The record is worth holding in your hands just for the packaging: a die-cut front cover, changeable inlays and on the back, a wonderfully colourful collage.
And the vinyl itself, glowing and vibrant. If you love vinyl as an object as much as a sound, his account is worth following.
https://www.vinylmeplease.com/collections/essentials/products/the-books-the-lemon-of-pink-full
September in the studio
I have been looking forward to the beginnung of the autumn season and it’s finally happening.
From 11–13 September, I will be at arte Wiesbaden – my first art fair 2026. If you are in the area, I would love to meet you there. https://arte-kunstmessen.de/veranstaltung/wiesbaden-2026/
From 26–27 September, as part of Kultursommer Südhessen, my studio opens its doors for Tage des offenen Ateliers. A chance to see the works from this newsletter in the place where they were actually made. https://www.kultursommer-suedhessen.de/tage-der-offenen-ateliers/veranstaltung/nina-kipper-abstract-art-nina-kipper-artist-and-illustrator/4287
I would love to meet some of you in person at either one.
And already one for your calendar beyond September: from 23–25 October, I will be at ART MUC in Munich. https://artmuc.info/besucher-infos/
Until then,
I wish you a season of things chosen for what they do to you, not for what they're called.
A room that feels like exactly what you need right now.
A film that pulls you in before you know why.
A cup that feels as good as it looks.
Or a painting that asks nothing of your art history, only your attention.
Because in the end, it was never about the name on the wall.
It was always about what happens when you stand in front of it.
Warmly, Nina
Atelier Notes is published once a month.
A letter from my studio – about art, culture, spaces and the small observations that shape my work.
I also have a newsletter in German; if you'd prefer to subscribe to that, please check out my website https://www.ninakipper.de/