painting 4: summer afternoon sky is part of Miriam Loellmann’s gesso paintings series which she started in 2017 and developed further since 2020/22. The "gesso paintings“ are mainly inspired by the sky scenes of Rio, the beach and the feeling of summer. "Summer in Rio - that is the theme of the gesso paintings. That's what I think about when I create them. The warmth of the sun, the lightness, the bright colors, the joy and simplicity, the smoothness, the soft movement…“, describes Miriam Loellmann. In 2017, due to her difficult financial situation, the artist discovered the material plaster and did not yet know about her following passion and fascination for this material. "At the beginning of 2017, I had very, very little funding for my studio and my work, so I had to find a solution that wouldn't interrupt my creative process, and "plaster" came to my mind. It caught my attention because it was white, light, inexpensive and quick to dry. I thought: let's see what I can do with it“, remembers Miriam Loellmann. In that year she created her first gesso cubes painting, with several white cubes that she casted in the ice cube form, originally used for her concrete cubes creations. In 2020 she further developed the gesso paintings, using pigments for the first time and finding a successful way to make the painting lighter, which allowed her to make bigger compositions/ paintings. Three years later, she returned from a trip from Germany and brought back high-quality pigments - a legacy from her grandmother, who was a painter. These brought a completely new color tone to her work and prompted the artist to begin new gesso paintings that had long been maturing within her. "The gesso paintings have an interesting process of how they are created: first I make the material. For several weeks I pour plaster cubes, which then dry in the sun for a few days. Once they are dry, they are polished part by part by hand and only then they can be used for the composition. I like this slow and repetitive work, which requires discipline, patience and perseverance“, mentions the artist.