|
For a long time, I believed that if I thought hard enough, prepared carefully enough and avoided mistakes, I would eventually arrive at the right answer. Perfectionism helped me achieve many things, but it also came at a cost. It left little room for surprise. Little room for intuition. Little room for simply seeing what might happen.
|
Making art gradually changed that.Not all at once, but painting after painting, experiment after experiment.
I realised that the moments that stayed with me were rarely the ones I had planned. They appeared while making. While trying something that wasn't supposed to work. While following an unexpected fold in the paper. While allowing a failed attempt to become the beginning of something else. |
|
|
Somewhere along the way, I found a kind of freedom I hadn't experienced before. Not the freedom of knowing exactly where I was going, but the freedom of not needing to know.
The freedom to stay curious a little longer. To trust the process. To let the work reveal itself instead of trying to control every outcome. |
|
Traces of a search.I often describe my work as the fruit of dirty hands and numerous failed experiments.
I like that image because it leaves little room for the myth of effortless creation. Every painting carries the memory of hesitation, doubt, revision and discovery. What remains visible are not imperfections waiting to be corrected, but traces of a search. The folds, torn edges or subtle irregularities, they're not flaws. They are evidence that something has been made by hand. |
|
I've always been fascinated by the gap between who we think we are and who we actually are.
We like to believe we're consistent. Rational. Decisive. In control. Yet most of us know what it's like to want opposite things at the same time. We long for certainty while being drawn to the unknown. We seek stability, yet something in us keeps asking for change. We want to belong, while wanting to remain ourselves. |
The titles continue the conversation.Each title gives words to an inner contradiction many of us recognise but rarely resolve. They don't explain the painting or tell the viewer what to think. Instead, they approach those contradictions with a certain lightness, allowing room for a smile, a familiar excuse or a moment of recognition. They simply open a door.
The paintings themselves do the same. From a distance, they often appear calm and balanced. Up close, another world begins to reveal itself: hand-painted Japanese paper, shifting layers, delicate fibres, folds and torn edges. What first seems simple slowly becomes more complex, much like people do. |
"I'd do pilates if my excuses weren't so flexible" 100x180cm
|
|
Although the paintings grow from my own observations and experiences, they are not intended as self-portraits. Once a work leaves the studio, it no longer belongs exclusively to me. I hope each viewer brings their own memories, contradictions and associations to it. In that sense, the work is completed through the act of looking. I simply hope it creates enough space for others to recognise a little of themselves within it.
|