“Painting consists of colors and forms,” says Jürgen Tarrach. “And women’s forms are particularly beautiful.” The actor is standing in his studio, a white-painted house that he had built five years ago in a corner of his garden near Potsdam. Inside: a lot of stuff in a small space. Washed-out brushes are stuck in countless glasses at the sink, the table is full of pens, sketchbooks, paint cans and tubes, mixing bowls and used color palettes. Tarrach’s paintings stand and stack up on the sofa, behind the sofa, on the walls, on the chairs, tables, stools and even on the floor, sometimes acrylic, sometimes watercolor, sometimes oil, with ink drawings and linocuts in between. Then: mostly women.
Tarrach’s motto: try it out. “I sometimes throw something away, you can’t always succeed, that’s impossible.”
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
Marlene Dietrich as linocut. Tarrach found the diva’s casual hand position particularly appealing.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
“I just don’t find men that exciting to paint,” says Tarrach, scurrying through his chaos. He pulls out one picture after another and rubs his beard on his chin: “Look, this leg position!” A lady in brown on a blue background, a former classmate. The 61-year-old liked her posture and facial expression in the photo, which was taken during a “Bunbury” production, so much that he just had to paint her. Or the opera singer Jessye Norman, a portrait, acrylic on paper, “I didn’t hesitate for long. I grabbed the template and it was an evening session.” Behind the portrait, a large-format oil painting leans against the window, showing a woman photographing herself through a mirror. Two linocuts by Marlene Dietrich and Anita Berber, a nude dancer from the 1920s, lie on a chair. On the wall, in turn, are pictures of his daughter, a lady in an armchair, and his wife in the garden. So lots of shapes.
Jürgen Tarrach in search of the flow.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
And then there’s “The Painful Ones,” a woman in front of a window, wearing only a towel around her waist, all rather abstract in dark greens and blues. That was actually his wife, “that’s how she came out of the bathroom, a great motif, so I said: honey, stop, I have to take a picture of you”. The picture used to be much brighter, more positive, now it looks gloomy. The culprit is an acute herniated disc, so Tarrach had to paint away the pain a bit, hence the title. “At first I thought, crap, now I’ve ruined the beautiful picture, but then I got really good reactions to it on the Internet.” Tarrach keeps showing off what he just finished via social media. So he can see what is well received and what less.
“I just need a piece of paper and a pen.”
The turpentine is allowed to stink in the studio, and the many oil stains on the floor don’t bother anyone.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
“I’m sure you now want to know why an actor of all things has to paint,” says Tarrach, grins and slides into his director’s chair. He became known with the crime series “Die Musterknaben”, he can be seen in the theater as well as in “Tatort”, was awarded for his role as Walter Sedlmayr in “Wambo” and stood in “Casino Royale” alongside Bond actor Daniel craig “In this job you are dependent on so many things, you need a lot of preparation for everything, but none of it stays.” It’s different with painting, because the grandchildren could say later: My grandfather painted. That’s why painting helps him to clear his head, “I’m completely free and self-determined there. I only need a piece of paper and a pen.”
Most of Tarrach’s paintings are very representational, here is a more abstract work.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
And the flow. Tarrach describes this state as wanting out and not wanting out at the same time. You can’t force him, especially not if someone wants to watch him paint, “the line between daubing and a successful picture is minimal”. Sometimes the flow sets in, sometimes not, sometimes it takes a beer. “For courage,” says Tarrach.
As a boy, he didn’t know that there was such a thing as watercolor paints. The art classes at his high school in Erkelenz, southwest of Mönchengladbach, were neglected, and his parents were not interested in painting. Colors only came into the home when Tarrach became a father and he began painting with his two children. And he learned that colleagues like Hannelore Hoger and Dominic Raacke also painted alongside acting. “That’s when I took courage.” So about twenty years ago he bought his first watercolors and a pad. “The paper has to be thick, so a page costs 1.70 euros. Because I come from a small family, I thought: I’d rather just take a pad with ten pages.” Then he sat in front of it and thought: shit, if you fill it up now, the money will be gone.
Portrait of the opera singer Jessye Norman who died in 2019.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
Over the years and with practice, Tarrach becomes less afraid, he enjoys experimenting, trying out materials and formats. Here, too, it takes courage, you have to fill a large screen first. If he’s preparing for a difficult role, that’s not possible. “I can’t even make a phone call to any office.” He also packs his watercolor case when he’s filming: if he’s bored, he sits down in the hotel and paints. He had to have his own studio when he ventured into oil paints, about four years ago. He didn’t want to put his wife Ulrike through the fumes of turpentine in the house. Besides, here he has one man cavehis lair where he can muddle around as he pleases.
Creative chaos: a small excerpt from Jürgen Tarrach’s studio.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
However, there are no ladies in his garden shed. Tarrach copies photographs, postcards and posters so that he can get the proportions right. And it doesn’t have to be just women, there are also landscape paintings, scenes, abstracts. He likes to be inspired by Monet, his absolute idol. How best to paint a landscape, a beer mug or a face, he learns from Expressionists such as the American Richard Diebenkorn, Egon Schiele and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and from Old Masters such as Rembrandt, how to use light/dark effects manages. He also looked for a teacher who would explain to him how to create volumes in portraits, i.e. a cheek or lips, “difficult, these mountains and valleys in a face”.
The northern Italian lake hangs in blue right below the air conditioner.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
There is nothing completely new to be found in Tarrach’s works, and yet it has something of its own because he paints it. “I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, I just try to expand my techniques,” says Tarrach. “After all, I’m a hobby painter and can do whatever I want.” What he does is well received: in 2018 he had his first exhibition. He was very excited, but the first works were sold, now also through galleries. Nevertheless, doubts remain: “Actually, I wanted to keep the painting to myself, these are inner worlds that are being put on display.”
The question of all questions remains: When is a picture finished? Jürgen Tarrach puts his head to the side, thinks for a moment and takes a picture from the wall. A lake, behind it mountains that blur one behind the other, a cloudy sky, all very diffuse, in many shades of blue. Finished? It’s a question of feeling. “When I was working on this picture, turpentine ran somewhere. It now looks a bit like a rain shower in the background, so I didn’t want it at all. My teacher said I should just paint over it. But I wanted to leave it that way . It was finished.” Sometimes all it takes is a little turpentine – and courage.
No passion without accessories. Jürgen Tarrach needs these items for painting:
The color box
Mixing colors in the lid of the box results in tiny mini watercolors.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
“These are crazy watercolors from the company White Nights, but unfortunately not politically justifiable at the moment because they come from Russia. After I discovered them years ago from my painting teacher, I had to have them too.”
The pestle
Not a sex toy, but a glass runner for grinding pigments.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
“The glass runner looks a bit naughty, but you need it to grind up pigments if you want to make paint yourself. I don’t do it often because it’s very laborious. I’ve also made egg tempera, the old masters used it pre-painted, great consistency. To do this, you mix an egg with distilled water and oil, and then stir the pigment into the emulsion. To preserve it, you use clove oil. Because the egg is raw, you need a fridge for it, but My daughter just got the one from my studio. Hers is broken.”
The Parisian blue
The very intense Paris blue is also called “Berlin blue”. But nobody has to understand.
(Photo: Julia Rothhaas)
“A great color! I’m totally in love with this blue. If you apply it pure on thick paper, it almost looks black. With a little white, you get a crazy palette of blue tones bit by bit. It’s intoxicating. I feel blue sometimes out, I looked like a Smurf from head to toe.”
archery, To swim, pet the motorcycle: More episodes of “My passion” do you think …? Find here.