Artist Statement:

For me, the purpose of art is not only the enjoyment of it, but also to stimulate many different interpretations. I love to challenge the viewers to go beyond description, and to bring a part of themselves into the image as they create present day meaning out of it and make their own works of art in its interpretation.   I believe the highest achievement I can attain is to inspire others to create through my paintings.

I mostly take subject matter from my surroundings. I like to stretch and test my abilities freely, and therefore work in various artistic styles, mediums, techniques and themes. My work varies from highly detailed representational to non-representational abstract work, where I enjoy exploring the juxtaposition of the traditional with the unconventional. Even though I’m comfortable in exploring the more controlled, clear and predictable expressions represented by realism, I'm totally inspired by the courageous approach of abstract painting, where results are completely unexpected, exciting, and part of ‘happenstance’, where it allows for  my exploration and discovery beyond the familiar .  

I love to work in a multi-layered fashion that is often pragmatic and structured.  I work extensively with oil, acrylic and resin. I mainly use the glazing technique, mostly as a whole, but sometimes as part of a painting, where I use extremely thin paint to build my colors and tones slowly, leaving the paint to dry completely between each glaze. Glazing not only adds a lot of depth, but also allows you to add special effects in a very discrete way. In addition to glazing, I use layers of thick and thin color, washed or scumbled over a surface. In some of my work, I employ resist techniques, ink, conte, graphite, charcoal, wax, cement, reflective grounds, pigments, as well as various tactile techniques, such as scraping, pouring, spattering, dripping and mark making, which are straight, curved or gestural. Generally, I love color and the drama created by extreme light, depth, and contrasts.