Artist Statement
The fact that we live in a culture of secularisation does not mean that mankind has come to terms with being merely a cog in the machinery of society. Goals, direction and meaning – few of us dedicate ourselves to actively finding the answers, but we are all regularly overcome by those moments when we view ourselves from the outside and shiver at the realisation that our life is a movie that no-one wants to watch. I am of the opinion that those are the very moments when we are truest to ourselves.
I want to draw attention to those moments in my paintings and make them poignant. My images show neither the beginning of an event, nor its end or its culmination. They are about exactly that moment when an event pauses uncertainly in a state that we experience as meaningless. The static moment when we question our own existence, but not to the degree that our scrutiny will lead to a first step in a new direction.
My decorated objects relate to the ‘cult-objects’ that in past times offered mankind a channel to a fictional world for those moments when reality seems static and pointless.
Worship of objects has followed mankind, from the Venus of Willendorf to the careworn saints of churches. I am interested in objects that tell a story – not in an immediate visual manner, but through their assumed purpose, as props in scenarios.
I believe that the human desire to decorate objects has its foundation in a search for beauty as a Deity in itself. In this exploration there is a will to reach the sublime, a key to a higher form of existence. You depict nature with a desperate yearning to replicate perfection in an attempt to get in touch with something God-like. This is something common to all cultures, independent of religion.
I want to spend a lot of time with my creations. I like to produce them slowly and with consideration, therefore I often choose techniques that can seem irrationally slow. However, I feel that I need to develop a deep relation with an object in order for me to be able to fully believe in it. I come to develop a love affair with most of my creations.
Perhaps I am suffering from the romantic notion that I am some how able to charge the artwork with some kind of energy – a primal naive desire to convey to the observer the intensity I experienced while creating the object.
