Paintings and stories

Childhood

Oil on canvas | 200 x 140 cm

The Time Machine

Oil on canvas | 190 x 130 cm

In this work we can discover an exciting ’double mill’-game. We can see three different layers mixing and flowing into each other. The first layer is the wall itself, on which the human figures move. The figures themselves serve as the second, the machine as the third layer. Sometimes the first layer is on the top, sometimes the second or the third. Everything is always changing and moving like the unstoppable time itself.

Shadows can help the painter a lot when she aims to make the spatial relationships in the painting feel, but they are also suitable for misleading the viewer. Together with the painterly tool of dissolving the forms and the abrasive technique they make the beholder think. What is in front? What is behind? What is it I really can see?

The average citizen

Oil on canvas | 140 x 140 cm

This painting symbolizes the life of the average citizen, a pretty claustrophobic world isolated from any incoming information. For the representation of the commoner I borrowed my own body in the company of my favourite tiger. I stuffed into the box as many draperies and fruits as I could manage, to represent the material aspect of our world.

Study for ‘The War’

Oil on canvas | 100 x 120 cm

I love to paint brocade textiles, because they are the most complicated materials possible. It is always a challenge to paint them. The complex pattern not just follows the form of the drapery, but it also has its own thickness. Working with it is a real mind-game, a focusing exercise.

We always want

something else

Oil on board | 170 x 150 cm

It was a really exciting excercise to ’cover’ the horse with the gold drapery. But of course for this purpose I couldn’t use a real horse, but I had to build a dummy from furniture and pillows, which I bedecked with the artfully arranged drapery. The old masters used to keep a horse skeleton in their studio for this purpose.

Pro Patria

Oil on canvas | 160 x 110 cm

The national elections were coming as I started to work on this piece. The political battles and fights affected everyone’s life deeply, they managed to devide the country. Since one of the tasks of art is to be able to mirror the atmosphere of our own times, this painting was born as a snapshot of that period.

The walk

Oil on board | 160 x 110 cm

Jolly moments don’t last forever, do appreciate them! The modells in this painting are my daughters, the girl ont he right is my older, on the left is the younger one. The main character weimaraner is my friend’s dog Dorka, who goes for a walk very often with my dachshund Daisy (She is featured in the ’Waiting’).

Waiting

Oil on canvas | 170 x 200 cm

Viewers oftentimes call the girls in this painting ’dancers’, though most of them are sitting on a chair and two of them are standing straight. The rhytmic play of the arms and hands is misleading, mimicking dance moves in the eye of the beholder.

Self-renaissance

Oil on canvas | 160 x 210 cm

When I start a new picture, I already have a pretty clear idea about the general final effect of the painting. Here you already can see where I plan to paint the gilded background, because I underpainted those parts with orange yellow, but left the place of the figures bare white.

I do a grey underpainting for the skin color, on top of this I will work out the different skin tones. The underpainting of the dead body is a lot greyer than the one I do for the living, standing figure.

Here the same grey underpainting is visible for the head, and the first layer of the drapery is done already.

The hand is done, but the ribcage of the lying figure is still waiting for the final layer.

On top of the grey underpainting I paint a thin layer of skin-coloured oil paint called ’half-paste’, into which later on I work the white paint for the ’lights’. This technique was perfecteded by the great Titian.

What kind of god is this?

Oil on board | 206 x 170 cm

The biblical symbols of the classical academic painting are outrageously mixed with the objects of everyday life in this painting. This contrast opens the door for the viewer to discover brand new and complex ideas.