The following is a short description of my artist statement.

After an initial examination of my prints, you may have already recognized that I am completely engaged with realism and representational painting, a direction which nowadays encounters many difficulties. With the start of Modernism at the beginning of the 20th Century, with the rise of the “isms” like Dadaism, Futurism, or Expressionism, art has turned its back on the century-old principle of mimesis, the representation of visible reality. Advocates of avant-garde movements stigmatize the artist who leans towards the representational as backwards, outstripped, superficial, and even (like Carlo Carra and his friends did in their “Technical Manifest” of Futurism) as “infantile and grotesque.”

Although the art of representational painting was pushed into defense by such hostilities and was now supposed to be dominated by Modernism, it continued to exist: Here I want to remind of Pop Art, Photorealism, Figurative Painting or exaggerated forms such as Surrealism and Magic Realism.

The developments during the most recent past let to conclude that realism again orients itself stronger on classic examples. Edward Lucie-Smith established to this, although directed towards the United States: “The most important development within American realistic painting … is neither the attempt to seek reconciliation with the abstract nor the inclusion of the camera according to the art of photorealism, but the rediscovery of painting of the Old Masters”.
Also I refer back to historic examples and traditions while dealing with the art-historic heritage such as Renaissance or the Barbizon School of Classic Realism and try to make a contribution to modern European art.

I strengthened my artistic skills through my studies in painting and graphic arts at the Hochschule Leipzig, where I successfully graduated in 2001. Since then I have participated in a variety of exhibitions such as work shows in Bansko and Sofia in Bulgaria, the city hall in Markleeberg and the Hofgalerie in Weimar (both in Germany). My paintings could also be viewed in various localities around Leipzig, Germany, such as the Luther Church, the Trade Fair, and the Hansa Building. After a trip to Bulgaria during my studies in 2002, I went to Tuscany, specifically the areas of Arezzo and Perugia in spring of 2004. There I not only had the opportunity to deal with the originals of famous masters of art such as Pierro della Francesca, Giotto di Bondone, Michelangelo, Raffael, but also created a series of small-format landscapes, whereby it was important to me to paint open air in order to deal directly with the new surrounding, model immediate nature, and capture the natural effects of light.

Besides landscapes, portraits and still life play a large part in my oeuvre. In my portraits I try to bring forward the characteristics of a person: the model’s various facial expressions are painted over and together during multiple sessions; movements are condensed to an integrated whole with loose brush strokes. Thereby it is important to me to create the illusion of life for the viewer and to portray the constant with the changing. In my still life paintings I aim loyalty to detail as much as possible; I dedicate myself to calculations and reflections of light in glasses and on metal surfaces as wells as plastic modeling of textures of the arranged objects and folded drapes.


Exhibitions