My artistic career is mainly characterized by self-taught further education. Studying clothing technology brought me closer to textile design. My work as a toy designer was made possible by my drawing and design skills. The independent activities of airbrush design and tattoo design are purely self-taught. Courses in the basics of painting at the Trier Art Academy in 2011 were the initial spark for my subsequent freelance artistic work. Since then, I have regularly attended summer academies and was accepted into the BBK Sachsen-Anhalt e.V. in 2016. I have exhibited regularly since then. Two solo exhibitions in Sangerhausen and Lübeck followed. I have been working freelance in the southern Harz region since 2020. My artistic work is characterized by collage, which was at the beginning of my freelance work and is still part of my visual worlds today. Painting, drawing, various printing techniques, coloring, transfer and textile art are combined on the image carrier. The choice of materials is also varied, so that one can almost always speak of mixed media works. I draw on my wealth of professional experience and my passion for collecting. Themes can be found in the things that surround me. Since 2011, I have devoted myself intensively to the theme of searching for traces and making traces left behind in nature, in our environment and in current events visible. Or I use traces to fill them with information. The focus is on people, whether as images or as the creators of traces. Traces that are left behind surround us always and everywhere. They can be visible or intangible... a memory, a dream. I am a seeker, a collector. I search in people's faces, on objects, in nature and in stories. The materials used, such as old textiles, magazines, papers, etc., also show signs of use. I find them at flea markets and household clearances. From the very beginning, everything is a process of assembling, a collage. This can be a pictorial idea or become a picture itself. Past and present are linked together in material and motif...and at the end of this process I leave my traces behind.
Ines Buff in the Artworld
Reading Traces
Ines Buff weaves the traces of existence into images that resound like a loud echo of the present. Her works read like visual poems of what was, what is—and maybe also of what is yet to come.
Ines Buff in the Artworld
Die Spurenleserin
Ines Buff verwebt die Spuren des Seins zu Bildern, die uns wie ein lautes Echo des Jetzt entgegenhallen. Ihre Werke lesen sich wie visuelle Gedichte dessen, was war, was ist – und vielleicht auch dessen, was noch kommen wird.
