Monster Portrait Painting

For many years now I have been involved in the issues of painting as a contemporary medium for making art. Far from being a dead tradition painting has re-invented itself to consolidate its importance in art history. So it’s not too far out to state that painting still is a much relevant media for contemporary art. Everything’s been done and re-done, so everything is allowed. It’s a question of finding one’s singularity among the many forms of seeing in today’s contemporary world. I have been struggling with some of the most challenging notions in painting today. The search for an image. Confronting the compound relations between image and action, building and deconstruncting an image where the issue itself becomes the painting. Through out my painting practice I have turned to the mass media to find images that I can work with. I was always interested in the nature of an image and wether it could be transformed and decomposed into something new: a painting. I would look for this images on the web or take them myself most of the times. The image goes through a transformation during the painting process: it grows away from its essence as I make decisions regarding form, color and composition. While I’m painting my own images from the mind find their way into the painting. Is that transformation that always makes the final result of the work. The process of painting is usually a far more inconscious activity than the result itself. In my work I try to deliver some sense of confusion and disorder, but in an organized way. I want the viewer to struggle with the painting, to find a connection in allowing himself to be lost in the chaos. Nonetheless find some sense of belonging, something he can grab on to. My painting can be understood as living between the figurative and the expressionist worlds.