2026
TRACES OF MEANING
You’re a World Away
In this new series, Marlies Schweyer explores how meaning shifts when context begins to dissolve. Images appear as fragments — traces of something once whole — yet they resist reconstruction. What remains is not a clear narrative, but a space of distance, ambiguity, and quiet tension.
You’re a World Away reflects the subtle disconnection that defines much of contemporary experience. Information circulates endlessly, yet understanding remains partial. Proximity and distance collapse into one another. What we see is rarely complete — and what is missing becomes part of the image itself.
Schweyer approaches painting as a temporal medium: layers accumulate, gestures respond rather than illustrate, and earlier decisions remain visible. The surface becomes a site where memory, perception, and projection intersect. Meaning is not fixed; it emerges slowly through sustained looking.
Traces of Meaning becomes a space where uncertainty is not a deficit but a condition of awareness — where painting acts as an echo of our time, resonating between presence and absence.
"It is about the places we leave behind, the ones we invent as we go, and the fragile, persistent will that pushes us forward. This work is an echo: of questions, of shifts, of selves in thoughts."
THE ECHO OF THE METAMORPHOSIS, 2025
Tempera, oil paint and oil pastels
on canvas, 140 x 160 cm
“It's this contradiction that fascinates me, this abyss at which we all find ourselves at some point. This gap that separates us and yet unites us, in our childlike hope of overcoming it someday.”
TOWARD A DIFFERENT TRUTH, 2025
Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm
PAINTING & NATURE
Bringing my paintings into nature is a way of connecting again — with the elements, with nature, this breathing world that surrounds us. It’s a gesture of returning, of placing what was made indoors back into the wider field it belongs to. Our world is not separate from nature. It’s shaped by it, moved by it, and made of the same shifting forces. By placing my work among trees, stones, wind, and light, I open a dialogue, I listen, I remember: I am not outside this world, but deeply woven into it.
”It is the unspeakable, the lost, the twisted part of the truth, that pushes to the surface, through all layers, always toward the light.”
Each artwork marks a point within an ongoing journey. Rather than fixed statements, the works unfold as moments of transition — shaped by time, perception, and inner movement.
a journey
in Artworks
FLYING
2024
acrylic and oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm
THE ETERNAL GAME
2024
acrylic and oil on canvas, 24 x 30 cm
2025
acrylic and oil on canvas,
40 x 50 cm
ANCIENT PATHS TO HEAVEN
ANCIENT PATHS TO HEAVEN explores the enduring narrative of our collective longing for something more — a better life, a promised future, a place beyond. It reflects on the image of heaven, the idea of reaching for the stars, and the deep-rooted human craving for transcendence. The work questions this constant striving and places it within a larger, historical arc — one driven by the timeless and restless momentum that has shaped human existence from its very beginnings.
The piece considers how profoundly this longing is embedded in our shared psyche. Whether expressed through mythology, religion, science, or space exploration, the vision of a "beyond" continues to shape our choices, our technologies, and our sense of self. The heaven we pursue may shift in form, but the desire remains remarkably persistent: to overcome limitation, pain, and mortality.
Visually and conceptually, the work weaves together ancient symbols with a contemporary feeling of dislocation and urgency. It suggests that the path to heaven has never been linear — instead, it loops, fractures, and reforms, guided as much by memory and myth as by hope and imagination.
WORKS ON PAPER
The works on paper emerge from a more intuitive and immediate process. They allow space for inner movements — for gestures that unfold without a predetermined structure.
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godhead
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warrior mask
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gate keeper
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shadow of mine
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tar wings
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CAN YOU HEAR ME?
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light my fire
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memory lane
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falling figures
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ancient face
Alongside the original works, selected paintings are also available as fine art prints. Each print captures the depth, texture, and atmosphere of the original piece, offering an accessible way to bring the work into your own space. Printed in museum-quality, archival materials, they carry the essence of the canvas while allowing the artwork to live in new homes and contexts.
PRints
”Paintings are metaphors that concretize the abstract and question the apparent.”