Bei meinen zahlreichen Aufenthalten an der Algarve, wo ich auch Skulpturen hergestellt und ausgestellt habe, arbeitete ich neben portugiesischem Kalkstein mit Schwemmholz, um Sockel zu bauen und gelangte so zum Sammeln allen möglichen Treibguts, welches ich in meine Steinskulpturen einarbeitete.

Dieses Einfügen artfremder Materialien erweiterte ich mit Glaskugeln, Klitzerteilen, etc. Die Suche nach geignetem Material wurde zum Finden von Dingen wie „Seelenteile, die vor meinen Augen auftauchen“ und ich fand sie nicht nur am Strand, sondern auch z. B. am Timesquare in New York, wo sich ein Haarkamm mir offenbarte, den ich zur Elefantenkrone verwandelte.

Viele meiner Skulpturen erzählen Geschichten, haben Seele, sind auch mal witzig und entstehen meist intuitiv aus dem Bauch raus. Das spielerische, das innere Kind ist für mich die Quelle der Inspiration.

E n g l i s h t e x t :

Cony Welcker – Sculptures and More

I`ve been told that my sculptures are very different and maybe the viewer is surching the red line in my whole work. It´s easy if you look from inside your heart.

Some pieces are totally figurative and I worked only with the form and the stone, for example ("Die Liebenden"; "Selbstportrait"). These are works from the beginning of my art work. In 1988-91 I made an education in a shop that sells gravestones. I learned much about technics and stones, what is the base of my whole work. After this education and receiving the master I startet my own way and made
the first free sculptures ("Augentier"; "2 liebe Esel mit kleinen Ohren").

After a few years and within the experience of the first exhibitions and the communication with the viewers I growed inside and developed more and more my own kind of art. I began more to play with the stone and the art work, wich is arising. The final work should not only be a figurative handwork but a kind of individual inner copy. I discovered the color in the different stones and realized, that the color is a important part of my complete sculpture.
I wanted more and more to feel the sculpture and the soul of it, and if my art is a mirror image of my soul, I wanted to see that image
clearer and clearer. For example the pearl in the eye of the most younger sculptures is a result of this search. Without this pearls or
glass marbles there is to less feeling or life inside for my opinion.
I don´t like living only at the surface, only constructed, only rational. I need it to feel all spaces of being and maybe I was given the power of finding a way to make it visible for the world.

I use for this kind of sculptures in last time mainly portuguese limestone, because that special stones have different colores and it´s a nice way to work with them. I don´t like very hard stones like granite, maybe I´m not so hard inside and more soft .

I get to know the portuguese limestones while my plenty visits in Portugal, wich is meanwhile a second home for me. To spend time at the Algarve brings me more to my inner sources. At the beaches I find interesting, exciting and curios things (for example the doll legs of the „Wumbaba“), that I use to put into some sculptures to make them complete. Also the wood from the beach I like to use for individual pedestals.

Sometimes I go on with this kind of game (play) in experiments and put only things together, wich I found somewhere, maybe at the beach or on the street and use a piece of wood as base from the ocean or the river Rhein, where I live here in Germany.

The game, the play, the search for my inner child is the source of my work combinated with the background of my technic knowhow.