"Raclette Party" Painting

I am a Hungarian painter, born in Transylvania, raised in Germany, and currently living and working in Budapest. I am a formally trained visual artist and graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. I work primarily and almost exclusively with oil on canvas, occasionally creating pencil drawings as well.

My work explores everyday rituals around the table through a distinctly female perspective. Many of my paintings originate from personal moments within family life. Themes such as maternal care, intimacy, relationships and shared time appear through simple scenes from daily life.

The table is a recurring motif in my work. Rather than approaching it as a traditional still life, I see the table as a kind of map or character portrait. The arrangement of plates, cups, food and small everyday objects can reveal something about the people who gather there, their relationships, habits and emotional connections.

I am particularly interested in the moment just before a meal begins — a quiet moment of anticipation, preparation and presence. These small, often unnoticed rituals form the emotional core of my paintings.

My approach is informed by the long tradition of still-life painting as well as by artists who have explored food, objects and the table as carriers of human presence and memory. Daniel Spoerri has been an important influence on my thinking, particularly his transformation of the remains of everyday meals into portraits of a specific moment and the people connected to it. I reinterpret this relationship between objects, food and human presence through a contemporary, personal and distinctly female perspective.

I am currently developing two parallel bodies of work. The first grows directly out of my own life: family relationships, motherhood, care, intimacy and everyday experiences around the table.

The second, *Writers and Artists’ Tables*, expands this idea beyond my own personal world. For this ongoing series, I invite writers, artists and other creative figures to share a photograph of their table together with a short personal reflection on what that table means to them. These personal texts become an integral part of each work and are presented alongside the paintings when exhibited. Rather than painting conventional portraits, I create portraits through their tables — through objects, food, traces, arrangements and the personal stories attached to them.