Beautiful But Dangerous: My Symbolic Paintings, Some With A Silent Animal Rights Agenda

I’m very interested in the language of dreams. I rarely paint pictures straight from my dreams but the logic and poetic language of dreams is really the basis for my paintings. Metaphors and symbols are being produced without any difficulty in dreams. I believe that this is the lost but true language of human being. These modern times don’t encourage us to use this language. But still it is very much part of us.

I usually paint first with acrylic colors. I use only black and white to get an overall feeling of the painting. When that’s ready enough, I move to oil colors. I use oil in very thin and transparent layers. Later I move to thicker layers of paint. In a perfect painting all these colors and layers are visible. Painting has to have a technical history that you can track down.

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As an artist I try to make people stop for a moment. And when they stop, they start to think

Nature and animals are very important for me. In my work there’s a silent agenda for animal rights and nature preserving

I don’t want it to be too obvious but for me it’s very important to have an ethical foundation in my art

I believe art can change the world. It happens slowly, one person per time

Paradise is coming down to normal landscape. Sublime and uplifting sensation is in the core of my art

My roots are in surrealism, but I don’t count myself as a surrealist

There’s a very interesting path in art history that I tend to follow

I want my pictures to have an ambivalent presence

They can be intriguing and threatening at the same time

You want to come closer but you’re not sure if you have the courage

I usually deal with the big timeless themes as death, love, fear, nostalgia

In my new work I’ve excavated the School of Dusseldorf. That is the root of many interesting things

In my own personal interpretation I see two worlds colliding in these paintings

I don’t like to sketch. I draw some kind of markings in to my sketchbook but they are very rough and unfinished

When I start to paint, it’s very important to have a certain tension

If I make too many sketches, I lose the reason to paint that particular picture

I don’t want to paint my pictures too perfect, they have to breath

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