The KünstlerInnenhaus Apostelhof, in Vienna’s 3rd district, has become quiet over the last few months. Once a creative hub in the capital and known far beyond the city borders, now only a few artists have studios and workshops there, exhibit their work and meet to exchange ideas with each other and with people interested in art. Their artistic creative space in the old walls will be replaced by modern and exclusive flats in the near future. One of the few who are still there is Ulrich Plieschnig.

It is around 3 pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Actually not at all Plieschnig’s time when it comes to painting, he tells us with a grin as he welcomes us to his studio and adds: “Things don’t really get going for me until nine or ten o’clock in the evening. Nobody calls me then, it’s quiet around me and I can devote myself to my work without any distraction – until early in the morning. In summer, it’s often only the birdsong in the morning that gets me out of the flow of work.“

He makes an exception for us. The heart of his studio, his large work table, is covered with the 15 by 15 centimetre wooden blanks. Partly unworked, stacked into a small tower, partly already painted with white primer, waiting to be finished or already laid out to dry after another work step – unchanged after his last work step last night.

In the meantime Ulrich Plieschnig has put on his working shoes and gloves and instinctively reaches for his broad brush. The large paint buckets are ready: “I’ll start now…”. In the hours that follow, he lets us participate in his work and leads us through the entire process of creating his origin of light.