The Longest Day Print

I have spent all my life observing. But only since I turned forty, I have been translating this perceiving to painting. With oil paint, at first, then with acrylic. For the most part, I am an autodidact; I paint once or twice a week. Preferably, I work with large canvasses, involving physical labour in the progress. Besides painting, I practice photography. A series of photos often inspires me when creating a painting. Aspects of these images are rearranged in a composition. This approach is coincidental rather than rational, bordering the hazard objective. Themes in my work are people, roads, city landscapes, trees and nature. I am enthralled by the way that light shapes their surfaces, how it is reflected and how it is captured, leaving trails of shadow. Although my paintings represent windows to reality, I strive to construct this effect using non-figurative elements. Thes formations evolve in an unpremeditated fashion, layer upon layer. My only intentional charge is to harmonise these parts into a balanced painting. The essence of a painting to me is the solidification of reality at the moment it surpasses itself. A painting thus prevents reality from fleeing.