About me and my art
I live by the thought that “everything is in everything”—only at a different time, in a different arrangement, with a different intensity—so my answers, like my paintings, keep evolving. I first touched paint as a child, under my uncle’s eye; I often worked fast and abandoned canvases midway, which I now read as the beginning of my affection for ambiguity. For about six years I’ve been painting in a more deliberate, regular way, and I recognise that I stand closest to realism infused with surrealism.
I’m interested in a recognisable world in which a narrow seam suddenly opens to the “other”—strange, foreign, sometimes immaterial. Above all I chase atmosphere and emotion: sadness, helplessness, melancholy—yet also hope and love. I see them like a person standing by a lake at sunset: colours thicken, shadows gather weight, wonder mixes with unease, and after the sun slips away the lingering glow carries a quiet promise of another beautiful day. I don’t force interpretations; more often I feel that my paintings interpret me.
Inspirations
My sources are everyday life: shapes, light, sounds, tastes, memories, temperament, and the people I meet. Music sets the cadence of my work and tunes the canvas’s mood—Zbigniew Preisner, Massive Attack, I Monster, Wilki, and at times trance. The influence of other artists reaches me more as osmosis than quotation. I admire Picasso for his unapologetic certainty and the scale of his life-project; Balthus for refined eroticism and unvarnished atmosphere; H.R. Giger for the consistency of his idea and the width of his horizon; Zdzisław Beksiński for craft and a darkness close to my own. I respect Pollock for the drama of biography, Modigliani for a femininity caught through simplicity, Rembrandt and Caravaggio for chiaroscuro as dramaturgy, and Dalí for an inventive courage that doesn’t blush. These names aren’t recipes—they’re a quiet presence that steels my resolve to keep to my own path.
Technique and process
I work mainly in oils, sometimes in acrylics; drawing returns in waves. Most often I prepare my own HDF board as the support (I do use canvas at times). I begin with a sketch, lay an acrylic underpainting, then an oil one, and build the picture in many successive layers. Glazes make the surface change “face” with the time of day: some elements fade while others emerge; colour and light travel. I finish with a varnish that gathers the sheen, levels the “skin” of the painting, and protects it. I like when the labour of matter and the density of layers remain visible; I’m not after instant effects or surgical sterility. I sometimes pursue a partly mirror-like smoothness, but never at the expense of the material’s breath. Forms on my canvases are often simple—one or two motifs—while the painting itself aims to be rich, oblique, and re-discoverable: works to return to, not to glance at once.