We Cannot Say We Did Not Know Painting

In recent years I have focused on exploring structures such as thickets, embankments or overgrown slopes. Each project consists of a series of works on paper and canvas with a specific inspiration. My paintings build up layer upon layer, and since I'm working on many pieces at the same time, that can take years. New paintings are started unintentionally: some colored areas, patterns, overlays. Compositions are built up by overlapping layers of paint with the help of stencils and historic pattern rollers that I collected for the last twenty years. Over time, the layers entangle and certain atmospheres become perceptible. It is important to me to keep the random, accidental, and inappropriate visible, like spots and graffiti-like fragments, left-overs and stray lines. Words and patterns rely on repetition, like magic spells. In my works, I connect research in fields as mythology, feminism or ecology with individuality, emotion and beauty. Together, these structures evoke ambiguous natural sceneries I am interested in, familiar and alien at the same time. Throughout my career I blended my love of pattern with a deep interest in landscape and plants. This is what informs my work in the studio, in the garden, and as horticultural installations. I am radical in the most original sense of the word radicalis, which means rooted, connected to the earth, with plants at eye level. Here, the radical is a form of earthly attachment. I think of my paintings as growing and evolving, revealing themselves slowly.