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2023, series of 28 drawings, each 29,7 × 42 cm, aquarell, lead and coloured pencil, ink, yarn, charcoal on paper
In Memory of Jakob Wagner (2006 - 2023)
I don’t have much words for the loss of my brother, who died in January 2023 of suizide. At his funeral, I couldn’t think of anything to say so I sang two songs. In the months that followed, I don’t remember myself talking much, it was too tiresome, but I remember myself making these drawings. With them I could strech it out, strech out the minutes and hours. With them and my dreams at night I kept myself in a state between him being alive and him being gone. The drawings were a way to hold time and to not having to say goodbye just yet.
For several years now, I didn’t know what to do with these drawings. I stored them in a folder and stopped looking at them. I stopped showing them. They are very different from the paintings I made since then. They are dark, unpolished excerpts of a long nightmare and sunless winter. They are very personal and I always struggled with putting something “out there” I considered private. But I owe them a great deal, as a person and as an artist. For through making these drawings I could endure looking into the dark well my brothers loss opened up in me, and after some time, I saw reflected on the dark waters the single star I believed would still be there, behind the impenetrable clouds. When dawn came, a full-on glorious dawn, the visions passed, my brother passed beyond a hill, out of sight and returns to my dreams now only occasionally. There was a path for me too, one that I have been walking since, step by step. New sights have appeared as I walked, new themes and paintings occupied my thoughts. But knowing you and losing you shaped my path and keeps on colouring my world. And maybe, one day, after walking many leagues and traversing various terrains, i am hopeful our paths will cross again.
Text: Maria Wagner, 13 November 2026