Ulrike Arnold
Earth Paintings from Amangiri Land

Created from the very earth on which Amangiri rests, German artist Ulrike Arnold's exceptional artworks capture the stark beauty of the resort's desert surroundings. Produced at Broken Arrow Cave– near ancient petroglyphs and dinosaurs remains –, the pieces record the artist's emotional impressions of the locale, its indigenous spirits, geological history and fractal themes. Literally extracted from the landscape – dust, sand, shale, clay, coal and volcanic ash – these native materials are mixed with a binder and applied to the canvas in broad, sweeping gestures often with the artist’s bare hands. Ulrike paints outside the cave and allows rain, wind, sandstorms, and wild animals like lizards and birds to transform her canvases into co-creation masterpieces.

"I expose myself to the forces of nature, I draw my inspiration from this daily encounter."
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– Ulrike Arnold

Ulrike was inspired at age twenty-one by the world-famous Paleolithic cave paintings of southern France. For the past 40 years, Ulrike has been traveling around the world capturing the spirit of the most magical landscapes that inspire her – such as the Atacama desert in Chile, Minas Gerais in Brazil, the volcanic rocks of Iceland, the Sahara desert in Morocco, Geghard Monastery in Armenia, the Aboriginal land in Central Australia, and the Colorado Plateau. Working around the world, often alone, and in extremely remote sites, she collects local pigments and minerals and pulverizes them into powder. This way, Ulrike has developed a unique style making large abstract paintings that appear like microcosms of the landscape. The artist gathers rocks, minerals, desert scraps, meteorite dust, and fossils and creates her paintings on site. Because no artificial colors are added to her paintings, she captures the essence, the aura and the natural color spectrum of the places where her works originate.

Ulrike at Amanigiri, showing different stone Materials
Ulrike at Amanigiri, sorting different Earth Bags

Ulrike was commissioned to create all artwork for the resort in 2009. Her paintings are available for sale at the Gallery. For a few months every year, she works at the Broken Arrow Cave as artist in residence, where guests are welcome to visit her.

Letter from a child on Amanigiri paper

About the Artist

Ulrike Arnold was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1950. She studied music and art education from 1968 to ’71 and in 1979, she enrolled in the prominent Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. There, she studied in the class of Klaus Rinke and became one of his master students. Since 1980, she has been working as an artist and traveling on five continents. Her work has been shown in more than 130 exhibitions and is part of renowned public and private collections worldwide. In 1992, she exhibited her Earth Paintings and Colors at UN conference in Rio de Janeiro. She has received several fellowships and awards including the Eduard von der Heydt-Förderpreis, Wuppertal, and the Viola Award, Flagstaff. Numerous publications and feature films document her work. Dialogue Earth, the documentary film portrait by Hank Levine (2019), was officially presented and awarded at film festivals worldwide. Arnold lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany, and in Flagstaff, Arizona, when she isn’t traveling the world.

Dialogue Earth
Documentary

Dialogue Earth is a feature-length documentary, which offers us a moving portrait of the German artist Ulrike Arnold.

Movie Trailer

Further Reading
ELYSIAN Magazine

The Healing Arts at Peaceful Mountain - A portrait of Ulrike Arnold working at Amangiri's Broken Arrow Cave.

Read Article

Daily Art Magazine
Interview

The Colors of the Earth and Beyond: Artist Interview with Ulrike Arnold

Read Interview

One World Painting

With her collection of earth colors from around the globe, Ulrike created the One World Painting between 2017 and 2019. Assembling earth colors from all over the world – Australian red pigment with greens from Armenia, black lava from Arizona with Senegalese red, white from the Easter Islands, yellow from Egypt, and many more – the One World Painting is a dialogue not only of colors, but of the continents, their countries, their histories and their peoples. The painting, which is shaped like an exclamation mark, makes a statement of peace, community and equality – and of the urgency to protect our planet. Bringing our perspectives back to the earth of our planet, the artist reminds us that we live together in one world.

one-world-painting.com
Ulrike standing on the canvas, while painting with earth.