ABOUT
My work is a direct translation of my own persona, my inner world and my emotions as they come to me whilst painting. My work is impelled, as it were, by my feelings and intuition, but because I want to keep it as universal and open as possible to the viewers I don’t want to explain my work. It’s for the same reason I also don’t title the paintings individually. Within them, I try to create my own language through which I can communicate with the world. I want to tell the viewers those things which are impossible to communicate verbally, things that are intrinsically invisible for them (e.g. emotions, meditative atmospheres, the physical act of the painting), but that I nonetheless try to make perceptible. It’s because of this I like to make imprints with my hands and fingers: they are visible traces of my actions. I am compelled by the true act of painting, the pure craft of it, which inevitably becomes a recurring subject of my work.
Within my work, I like to challenge myself by making constructions that I subsequently destroy. I will paint circles and recognizable figures, then destroy them. I also like to deliberately create conflict within my work, for example: I like to draw abstract and organic shapes onto mathematical paper. Coincidence is a recurring motive in my work. I let the paint do its own thing and work according to its own logic. I like the idea that the painting wants to paint itself. For this reason I enjoy working on unprepared canvas, which has a strong absorbing power and partly absorbs the paint. This leaves the surface with a stained appearance and limits my degree of control. I make sure to always leave room for chance and experimentation.
I like to say each painting is a struggle to accept as well as fight the void: it starts with the void, i.e. the empty canvas, and it will try to move back to this void, because of the absorption of the oil paint into the linnen. In between, then, is left the pure act of painting and a significant silence. Little is left to say than the words of Per Kirkeby: “I am a painter and I painted a painting and really I don’t want to say more about it. A picture is not decided by title or explanation, one has to look at it.”