Reconstructed Skull Painting

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had an intense desire to express my inner world with colors and shapes. When I paint, my consious thoughts stop and I let my hand be guided by my intuition. I have a dialoge with the painting, and try to listen to subtle hints of where to take it next. Throughout the years the subject of my work has mostly evolved around the beauty and rhythms of the natural word, of which my nature-rich and adventurous childhood in South Africa laid the foundation. My more recent work, however, tells stories of our modern fragmented reality. Since the rise of the technological and digital revolution during the last decade, specifically the explosion of social media usage, the fight for our attention on the screen has led our societies to become increasingly fragmented and polarized. My ‘Reconstruction of the Self’ portrait series is in fact a visual representation of how our digital world is becoming increasingly interwoven with our real world, leading to the fragmentation and eventually reconstruction of the very fabric of our social societal structures. Are we headed into oblivion or utopia? At the heart of all my work lies the language of color. I use it for it’s powerful way of expressing raw emotion, mood and movement. I usually start a work with great surging washes of diluted paint, upon which intuitive short and abrupt marks are made in order to bring the subject matter to life. Finally, bolder colors are added to finetune the color balance and desired emotion state.