"Space oddity" Drawing

About me

I am Guido Heller. Under the name ghKunst, I paint and draw portraits – both realistic and abstract. Which of the two it will be, I often don’t quite know myself beforehand.

For many years I built websites. Pixels, grids, everything exactly in place. Today I push charcoal dust and oil paint around, and none of it stays where I put it. I consider that progress.

What fascinates me is the journey from a blank sheet to a face. At the start there is a white surface that looks at me quite unimpressed. At the end a person looks back. In between lie sometimes 45 minutes of wild charcoal strokes, sometimes 40 hours on a single sheet – and, with one oil painting I have been working on for over a year, mostly patience. Faces have a mind of their own anyway: once I set out to draw a completely anonymous portrait, without any reference. In the end Luke Skywalker was looking at me.

What really moves me is what a face does not say. The hesitation before an answer. The glance that drops to one side. That is why my pictures are called Trauer (grief), Melancholie, Trost (comfort) or Geborgen (sheltered) – and rarely “Laughing Lady with Hat”.

“For me, portraits are an attempt to hold on to an expression – sometimes in a quick stroke, sometimes only after months of work.”
Melancholy is part of me. I don’t consider it a flaw, more a way of looking more closely. It may sit at the table – it just shouldn’t run the conversation. Some of my pictures were made in difficult times. Painting and drawing helped me get through personal crises. It was not running away but looking closely. Perhaps you can sense that. I hope so.

And then there is music. Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Kurt Cobain, Miles Davis and, for forty years now, Maria Callas have been with me through life. Many of them now hang as portraits in my musicians series. It is my way of saying thank you. Or of finally answering them after all these years.

For my oil paintings I use Schmincke’s Mussini resin-oil colours, occasionally I work with gouache; for drawing I reach for charcoal, pencil and chalk – and afterwards for a great deal of soap. My textured works on the theme of Tibet form a separate body of work. And when I am not painting, I take photographs in black and white, often in Antwerp, my city.

I am also happy to paint or draw a portrait for you – of you yourself or of someone close to your heart. Promise: I listen before I set down the first stroke.