Anton's Diary

A Personal Perspective
Anna Krenz

Since I was a child my Father used to collect all my drawings, sketches, scribbles on smallest pieces of paper. I still have them, somewhere in a cardboard box in my Mom’s house. Maybe that has no real meaning, but every now and then I look at them and a whole well-known reality comes back to my mind. I remember what I had in mind, even as a small child, while drawing all these pictures, more than I remember my early childhood and things surrounding me. These drawings are who I was, who I became. They remind me of me.

Since my son, Anton, was born (March 2010) I immediately decided to document his life. At the beginning it was a „classical“ scrapbook, with some greeting cards and photos glued in with small written comments. Things evolved, however. I began to enjoy the narrative. I decided to make it more my way.

The first sketchbook (scrapbook) covered Anton’s first year. Then I found different tools and method for making his diary. I use simple and not so expensive A5 notebooks, pencil, blackliners and aquarelle. The whole „set“ is portable (since I travel a lot) and not very exclusive. It is also suitable for making things quickly (since I do not have a lot of time for that).

Since Anton’s 1st birthday I have been writing short stories and illustrating them with routine consequence almost every day. I document events: what we (mainly Anton, of course) do (play, walk, have coffee), where we go (exhibitions, concerts, parks, playgrounds) but also I describe Anton’s development (both physical and mental). I also write/draw about my own experiences with rising a child. The story in Anton’s diaries is true. I am not making it more colorful or cheerful as it was. It is the true story. Of him, of me, of all three of us.

My earliest memories are my drawings and paintings. I remember what I was drawing and how, which paint or paper I was using. I was learning about the world by drawing it. The development of my drawing style has always been a conscious learning process. I did not study at any art academy. I watched my parents, learned from them. I am self tought when it comes to art. And I was always challenging myself when it comes to drawings. In puberty, going through a kind of Sturm und Drang Periode, I thought drawing was a form of possession. Drawing something or someone gave me power over it. Later on I set myself another task, a challenge – to be able to express everything with minimal strokes. A kind of less is more approach, one line tells it all. Then I was trying to control my mind/hand connection so much in order to make the hand do the line the brain wants. That required discipline and I excercised that.

As far as I can remember I enjoyed telling stories. Even before I learned how to write I often made sequences of drawings with their rather simple narrative. Later on, in school age, I was writing primitive stories and illustrated them. Today, they are quite funny and abstract, as abstract a child’s mind is. However, I have always been a story-teller. The narrative has always been an important issue for me. When I was younger, I made stories up, today – I have Anton, the story-maker. I just write and draw it down.

Stories require structure – the beginning, the plot and the end. Having chaos on my desk, I have order in my mind. Everything I do has a structure, all articles I write, projects and artworks I make, I even have a system for washing the dishes, or hanging the laundry. That systematic and structural approach to making things, the ability to write and draw and a need to archive the life, most naturally result in such a project like Anton’s Diary.