Oil paint... or is it watercolor?
Working with oil paint is something I mainly learned at the academy, when I was focused on figurative work. The technique is also particularly well suited to larger works depicting the forest. I have always preferred working with a generous use of solvents and wet-on-wet techniques, rather than the classical build-up in slowly drying layers, as practiced by the old masters and described in traditional manuals. Like letting a brush loaded with water drip, curious to see which effects will emerge. Speed is essential to me, as it helps keep the image dynamic. I also allow chance to play a role in the painting process. I loosen my grip on the brush and let it move freely, much like a branch finding its way toward the light.
On patience, pencil and growth
I discovered colored pencils during a techniques course at the academy, shortly before the pandemic forced us to stay at home and become more introspective. Large-scale pencil drawings demand patience. With pencil, every branch must be drawn, every leaf given its color. The process requires care and attention, a willingness to linger. And yet—how much time does nature itself take before a flowerbed comes into bloom, before a tree rises and crowns itself toward the sky?
By now, I have a shoebox filled with colored pencils, and I know instinctively which shade of green to choose from the bunch. I have started to see the world in pencils—each tone, each nuance waiting to be drawn.
A contemporary cabinet
During the Golden Age, affluent collectors surrounded themselves with art cabinets—intimate spaces filled with paintings and miniatures, created for slow looking and quiet attention. Places where the eye could linger, and time seemed to soften.
In an age shaped by the internet and artificial intelligence, I sense a renewed longing for small, tangible things. For what can be held, gathered, and carefully arranged. For choosing space over excess, and silence over noise.
It is to this contemporary need that I wish to anchor my work.
Alongside traditional supports—wood, canvas, and paper—I work with alternative carriers that become part of the interior itself: a folding screen, a globe. Surfaces that inhabit space, rather than merely presenting an image.
The theme of remembered nature, and of growth that endlessly returns, runs quietly through this practice—echoing the slow rhythms of time, attention, and becoming.