INTERVIEW
How do you cope with the fact that you are self-taught?
Well, I think at least my pictures don't really care :-D.
And I think that in the end the viewer doesn't care whether the artist studied or acquired the skills on their own. Ultimately, it's the result that counts and they have to like it. But it's certainly harder to be self-taught in the art world. The only thing that helps is to focus on your own work and believe in yourself! And I notice that when I put more energy and time into it, i recieve more positive feedback from my audience and that tells me that what I'm doing is ultimately working.
When and how did you start with art?
Like most children, I first came into contact with art in the visual arts class at school and was enthusiastic and committed to it. Ultimately, however, I think that during puberty I was able to express and give space to my feelings by painting pastels and oil pastels. I still have some of these pictures today and they are very valuable to me. Some of these pictures and sketches currently serve as the basis for acrylic paintings or entire thematic cycles. Over the years, my interest in art never waned, but grew stronger and stronger until I finally had the resources and opportunities to set up my own small studio at home.
Where do you get your inspiration from and how do you process it?
Ultimately from every moment and every audiovisual impression that grabs me on a certain level and makes the images and image ideas sprout in my head. That can be a walk in the neighborhood or on vacation or even just scrolling through my Instagram feed.
What do your pictures represent?
It's always about color, so to speak. That's the basic theme that I try to emphasize with the harsh contrast of the primary colors red, blue and yellow, for example. This is particularly clear in the core pieces of my first theme cycles FARBRAUM, ZEIT and LICHT. At the same time, it's always about a deeper theme that develops in the theme cycles and that I try to describe in the pictures. These themes and content then extend over several different works. In this sense, all the works in a theme cycle form a common canon of images that are all in context with one another.
How does your creative process work?
With an image idea or the basic theme of a thematic cycle, I try to slowly approach the topic and the respective visual language. This involves countless sketches and preliminary work and ends on the canvas, where the original idea can also completely change and make all the preliminary work obsolete. In such a case, however, this is not a shortcoming of the basic idea or the project itself, but rather the creative process that one must allow and give space for.
This process then gives rise to several secondary ideas that lead to further work and thus fill an entire theme cycle.