Response to life is what inspires me to paint.
A response to what goes on in our world: in everyday life, in relationships and their intimacy, in private sphere and in family, in nature and in my natural surroundings. Wars, immigrations, pain and beauty, birth and death. Environmental changes on the planet Earth, climate changes. And their effects on our lives. Grief and joy…
These are expressed as colours, marks of the brush, imprints of my hands, lights, shades and textures. Layers of paint and colours, different surfaces weaving into each other like a tapestry, joining together. An atmosphere.
Those moments of painting are an opportunity to travel the uncertain road of creativity. Touching with certainty the ever changing life. Going beyond banalities and certitudes, diving into the unknown. As an artist, one has the opportunity to enter the threshold of the uncommon and uncertain. There, in that space, one can find the life force which can heal. Healing the small, so it can grow and spread.
Gardening offers me the opportunity to observe nature.
The cycle of life and death makes its way into my paintings. Flowers, which bloom with magnificent beauty, after their full maturity bend back on themselves, touch the earth again, break into pieces and disappear... to be reborn in another part of the garden.
Acceptance: life is.
Painting allows much liberty. Errors have their space, so, no need to fear: every gesture is meant to happen, in acceptance, almost as though preordained. Every accident is no accident: important is how you respond to it.
Often I start my paintings not knowing where I am going, not planning. After a while, slowly it becomes clear what this journey might be. I explore the intense moments of my life. Moments that have happened, the past. I reflect upon them and bring them into the present, but the instant I try to respond they are gone again.
Nevertheless, it is an attempt to contemplate, to share those intense moments. Moments that have helped to create a sense of how to navigate in life. An attempt to behold the intensity of that past as a stepping stone; accepting life of the present, painting the nuances of uncertainty. Which are life.