About me
A FEW SENTENCES ABOUT WHO I AM
In my work, I focus mainly on psychology and working with the subconscious. Although my paintings can be analyzed logically, I want them to speak directly to the viewer's subconscious and his imagination, to completely bypass logic. It's about the feeling that my paintings evoke.
As a synesthete myself, I store most of my perceptions in the form of colors, shapes and visions.
On canvases, I depict situations, relationships and emotions through the lens of bizarrely symbolic representation. What do the situations and feelings we experienced look like when our subconscious chews them up into a dream? What does a childhood memory look like twisted by time? I want to capture that and pass it back to the viewer.
But it's not just the scene itself that I work with - I'm also concerned with its arrangement. Although the shapes and volumes in the painting represent specific things or people, they are at the same time a surface and a color, and as such it is necessary to invent such an arrangement of them that supports the meaning. (Even though I'm chaotic at first glance, a part of me is surprisingly very analytical. And this is also reflected in painting: that's probably why I research composition, psychology, the workings of the eye, different approaches to painting, and I mix all colors from the three basic ones.)
But back to the topics.
Ideas for paintings most often come to me as visions (dozens of visions per day), and very often they follow each other. It returns to one environment, to one character, to specific relationships.
A series of paintings is actually always a map of a specific area of my field of imagination. They show the same area of my imagination from different angles, whether it's The Eel Man, Bizarre Vacation or Friends.
They often put together a specific story. I feel like I'm painting a movie - a movie that's more about atmosphere and characters. It hints at a plot that the viewer can complete himself between the images.
FAQ
In conclusion, I would like to add such a FAQ, i.e. the answer to the three questions that I receive most often:
Where do you go for those ideas?
I just think of those things - all the time. Every hour every day. There are so many of these subjects that they far exceed what I am even capable of processing (so the percentage that interests me the most will end up on the canvas). I always have one foot in what I call the field of imagination and where I draw ideas from. (I still believe that the artist is a link to something higher).
In short, I don't physically go anywhere for those ideas, they are in me. (I don't even need any stimulants, which is also a fairly common question. I'm abstinent. I think if I took something to stimulate my imagination, my brain would probably explode.)
Since when do you paint?
Honestly, I can't remember. It had to be before my oldest memories. Or rather - I can't remember a time that I didn't paint. Painting was present in my life since my early childhood. Apart from pop-up children's books, the first book that comes to mind is the History of Art vol. 9 by Pijoan and the painting 'The Disquieting Muses' by G. de Chirico. Ever since I saw that image, art took over me:) I gave that book collection a hard time throughout my childhood - it's well-thumbed.
And what would you do if you couldn't paint?
Considering the previous paragraph, it's clear that I don't even know what it's like not to paint. It is like writing or speaking for me…
Anyway, I always kind of knew that if I couldn't devote myself to painting, I wouldn't be happy. In the words of the painter P. Bonnard: "It's not about painting life, but about giving your life to painting."