Early Process

My work as a painter started during my studies for the Diploma of Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. After working on etchings for about a year my focus shifted to the Old Masters Technique. The topic of my work quickly focused on visualizing humans innermost states. Anxiety, Waiting, turmoil. For these themes I create surreal rooms and landscapes inhabited by human figures as a placeholder for the self experiencing situations of tension and relief.

Whilst in the 2010s till 2018 the topic was Waiting (Rooms) and the inner feeling of being in a waiting situation, my work now focusses on the Calm before the Storm, the Storm and the peace/calm after. This still is connected to the most human state of having to be patient in their lives.

Technique

My metier is Oilpaintings.

The motifs are representational and figurative but always depict a surreal/near-real sujet

Feelings and Situations of ones life are depicted in Landscapes, Rooms or Portraits that remind of reality, yet have a cryptic feeling to it.

Symbolism is a big part of these motives. Holes in a field, platonic solids strewn about the area that is shown, and people in the center of vibrant cloudscapes make up the metaphoric levels of the pictures.

Themes

The spaces I depict are visualizations of a humans inner self. In this near-reality boundaries blur. One state of being transitions into another, often unnoticed and only being seen upon reflecting afterwards.

To me, the state of the mind is ever shifting. I depict these shifts in series of paintings which follow a storyline, just as our life does.

The Waiting Rooms, which were the starting point of these explorations, represent a mental state of being in stagnation, almost imprisoned. But we do not stay here. It eventually opens up and changes. This is shown through the dissolving of the rooms architectural boundaries into the landscape. 



The stillness of waiting is inherently full of tension, in most cases. I depict this moment by putting a seemingly calm and still (almost statuesque) human figure into a bleak, surreal room in which the ratio of furniture varies.

The tension breaks into movement the moment the storms happen. The moment the room opens into a storm and the waiting culminates in the end of the wait.