London Underground, Oxford Street Station Painting

I am a figurative painter. I do not have a favourite colour. I like acrylics for their quick results. I like oil because of the smell. I love old masters. I Iove some modern masters also. If I had been an old master I would most likely have painted still lifes what with being intrigued by the subject of Vanitas, or the momentariness of life. Nowadays, all varieties of classic still lifes seem to have been painted, which is why I keep looking for other ways to capture the transitory aspects of modern life without the help of decaying food or dead birds. For my latest series, my sketchbook has been a little battered Japanese camera (Digital Harinezumi). According to its manufacturer it is re-inventing what is around us. With its blurs, distortions and inaccurate colours it helps me to add a snapshot quality to my paintings, while I am trying to illustrate the melancholy and the inevitability of the constant change around me. Change seems to be the leitmotiv for the upcoming year, as I am recently moving back and forth between portrait, landscape and still life. Always in search of a new form of expression, I keep switching between a simple freestyle and a more realistic manner. Acrylics are the perfect medium for what I currently paint as they dry fast, provide immediate results and allow me to stay flexible in terms of style. For the time being I seem to have found my tools and subject, but that will keep changing. Inevitably. www.julia-abele.de