But where’s the painting before it’s actually done …?

I love the pure white of an unpainted canvas, an open, empty space in which anything’s possible. In this state, I also feel an emptiness in the sense that I allow something else, something bigger to flow through me, even when I’m pursuing a definitive objective.

Before I begin painting, I sit down in front of the canvas, absolutely still. I eavesdrop and feel my way deep into myself, and open up for creativity. The path reveals itself slowly as I start to paint. At some point though, something emerges, and I follow. But I’m not the one laying down the path. It’s rather an unknown, foreboding destination that draws me towards itself. It’s a process of creation and dismissal, repeatedly creating something new, always as an inner voice in pursuit of harmony, which manifests itself within me as a feeling of vibrancy and energy.

In my paintings, I don’t strive to capture nature as is. Instead, I seek to express its spirit, the nonverbal, invisible interaction between me and the forest, water, and air. Also my paintings of people intent to illustrate a sliver of what lies within them. In other words, what we really are and the foundation of our relationships. It is an expression of the state of being that reaches beyond one’s personal experiences and envelopes the observer. My wish is to have a positive effect, be heard somehow, awaken a desire and to remind that we are connected to everything and can only feel as "whole" if we live in this awareness. Perhaps the painting could be a door to whatever is behind the apparition of things, even if I paint this apparition itself.

The unmistakable presence of nature defines my lifestyle and my paintings. As I walk through parts of the southern Black Forest, I appreciate nature not just with my eyes, I perceive it with my whole body and allow it to transform me, the inner me, into motion. Later, as I continue painting, I repeatedly ask myself: Can one hear the rustling of leaves and the murmur of the creek? Does one see the branches swaying in the wind? And the flowing, endlessly moving water? Can one smell the forest floor? And the flowers …?

Through years of practicing qigong and meditation (qigong literally means ‘life energy cultivation’), I have become deeply involved in energy and reality beyond our usual level of sensory perception. I am fascinated by the thought that the energy I use for painting, or which was present and in effect as I painted, is somehow encapsulated as information in my painting and perceptible (unconsciously?) to the observer – independent of what’s actually depicted. By the way, this is the conventional view prevalent in traditional Chinese painting. There it is assumed that a painting not only carries the energy of the depicted within it, but also that of its creator.

I have been experimenting for a few years now with the idea of a ‘positive energy’ message in my paintings. I write down the words or sentences that generate the most inner resonance, as I meditate before painting, in a diluted color on an as yet empty canvas. Here, they lie later, under multiple layers of colors, invisible and hidden within the painting itself (included in brackets in the title of the painting).

If I had to describe in a few words what motivates my art:
Not knowing, openness, curiosity, experimentation, emotion, flow, energy, allowing, exploring, presence, silence, looking, meditation, spacesness.