To observe. I paint in order to register, to fix, to surface what often remains overlooked. My work is situated at the intersection of the documentary and the constructed: precise in execution, yet open in meaning. The subject may be banal, the light subdued, the composition still. But behind the apparent clarity lies a network of references, historical echoes, and conceptual shifts.

I began drawing as a child at my grandmother’s kitchen table. The objects I chose then: flowers, animals, traditional household items, were my closest companions. With the political transformations of 1989, I abandoned that space of introspection for a more conventional career path. Only decades later did I return to image-making, now informed by years of working as an architect and photographer. Unlike photography, which for me serves as a medium of controlled staging, painting allows for ambiguity, doubt, and emotional registration.

My training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts DKO in Antwerp offered me both the tools and the detachment to develop a visual language shaped by memory, perception, and formal clarity. 

I am not a political artist, but I do believe that how we see is political. 
Many of my works relate to collective memory: portraits of historical figures („Weimar“), fragmentary still lifes („Der Garten“, „Wahlverwandtschaften“), atmospheric smoke landscapes from news images („Cumulus“), or intimate toys rendered at life size („Little Soldiers“). They share a conceptual commitment to the idea of painting as index: a record of something seen, remembered, assembled. 

There is a sense of humor, too. Sometimes the viewer is tricked into thinking they see one thing, when in fact they are looking at something entirely different. I am interested in that moment of recognition and reversal — the point at which painting becomes not just a medium of representation, but of thought.

The aim is not to teach or to moralize. I want my work to speak with restraint, to invite reflection, and to acknowledge that clarity is not the same as simplicity. What looks evident may be full of contradictions. A paper bag may become an icon. A face may become a mask. A smoke cloud may become a sky.