Landscapes are the focus of my painting
For me, the special attraction of drawing and painting landscapes lies in to be directly inspired by the character of a landscape (usually “plein air”).
To abstract what I see, feel, experience and recognize – the respective section of nature – in point and line, in structure and color.
The different seasons – or rather the changes in color and structure – play a central role. I like to examine the relationships between colors, surfaces, forms and textures: landscape, drawing, structure and color therefore appear side by side on an equal footing.
My primary aim is to capture the typical nature of landscapes, regions and seasons and not to reflect a real landscape – a cell phone photo can do that.
That’s why I always take a sketchbook, pencils and watercolors with me on all my trips and excursions. Because drawing and sketching is not just a mental aid, it also trains the eye for proportions and quickly grasping the subject. At the same time, points of view and focal points are noted and tested in the first draft.
My painting is always a process of experimentation and discovery. When I paint, I don’t rely on preconceived ideas about where I want to end up. I therefore like to paint several pictures in a series in order to experience (see) how something can develop creatively and painterly.
My works combine the graphic with the painterly, color with line, the representational with the non-representational. The content should not only be reflected in the motif, but also in the design, in form, color and structure. And if the results are unexpected and interesting from a painterly point of view, then I enjoy them.
Equally important to me is the development of my own personal color palette, which characterizes every good painter. Vincent van Gogh once wrote to his French painter friend Émile Bernard about this:
“It is true that you can find the whole color scale in the few paintings Vermeer did; but to unite the lemon yellow, the pale blue and light grey is as characteristic of him as the harmonization of black, white, grey and pink is of Velázquez.”