River Oder Print

About me. I was born in the UK in the early 80s, but grew up in the wild countryside of Germany. I finished school with my A-levels in art and English and emigrated to the UK at the age of 18, where I threw myself into social work and general people-oriented work (like waiting on tables…) It is only when I started travelling that my interest for photography erupted and with that learning the manipulation of images, which ultimately led me to painting in the end. Philosophy and psychological studies was a course I did for many years, before I decided to leave, move to Berlin and study something more creative. I ended up at the BTK and took a communications design course that entailed regular life painting classes. That is what got me hooked and ever since then I paint with acrylics. I have never finished any of my courses at university, but learnt to be a florist instead. Today I am a painting florist. About my work. Painting to me is a spiritual journey that allows me to escape into imagination. I escape into phantasy places and dwell there for a while, I turn into the subjects I paint and see from their eyes and I recharge, when I look at my paintings after they are done. I am also captivated by the way life was lived before the age of technology and before having huge cities and before education, when it was just you, your community and the land with all the struggles it entailed. Therefore I suck up information on remaining tribes and communities that still live like that to some extend. My love for nature weaves itself through all that as well. However I am also looking at the other side of that kind of life and I wonder about the future and our loss of touch with ourselves and the growing addiction to technology and the internet and the craving for likes and so on. All these questions I ask and answers I give myself are reflected in my work, I believe.