Wet and cold - Dia in the rain Painting

I work on canvas using traditional painting techniques. Oil and acryl are my favorite materials and I like to combine various techniques and create unusual material combinations and surfaces in order to make my end product more exciting. I frequently apply several layers of paint and lazure to arrive at interesting color effects. I have always been interested in painting people, especially people that live around me. A personal contact with my model is key to a good picture. Without a personal contact painting loses its purpose and the product will lack life altogether. Most of my oeuvre is pictures of people. Although I have had topics other than humans, e.g. landscapes and animals, these too I have represented using the characteristics of a portrait. I am very attracted to strong colors and like experimenting with techniques, which I often use to make the visual effect more powerful. If it serves the purpose of expression I am ready to exaggerate. My works frequently combine archetypes, symbols, sacral and profane motives, often in peculiar composition. The people, spaces, and objects in my pictures are realistic and unrealistic at the same time. It is not conventional beauty that I am interested in but the aura of the model. As long as I am able to grasp that, the picture will be alive and will require no further explanation. In my most recent works I tend not to show the face, or to show it in parallelism with other body parts. My starting points are the arms, legs and other parts of the human body. I take photographs as well, which I use either as standalone works or as raw material. I have been examining the visual phenomenon of reflection for a while I am also interested in the human face as a symmetrical/asymmetrical system of shapes. In the future I wish to use the results of my past experiments and research to expand my artistic activity towards the borders of painting with music, applied linguistics and other forms of fine art. I have been into photography for a long time. Most of the pictures I have taken have been portraits of people that are close to me. My other favorite topic is myself. My self portrait photographs usually express my personality much better than the photos taken of me by others. These I often feel too direct and set-up. However, when I shoot a picture of myself the product is frank and personal, even when my facial features are somewhat distorted.