Joy of Living through colors

People often ask me

if it is possible to live on art -

I am convinced

that I could not live without art.

Experimental painting:

I totally enjoy using nature's materials - in an experimental style adding up layer on layer of stone, wood, seashells, eggshells, fruits, leaves, granules (e.g. car tires),  pigments, sands (e.g. kaolin, ground marble, red earth from Africa, sand from le Crete - Tuscany), but also papers and cardboard (binder's board, Japanese paper, parchment) as well as a wide variety of paints (acrylics, oil, airbrush, Chinese ink, varnish, ... coffee, wine, medicinical mud). I prefer working in the garden of our "Red Painter's Cottage" (Rotes Maler-Häusl).

Spontaneous realism:

Working in spontaneous realistic technique I don't use any additional materials, only high quality paint.

After a lengthy period of drawing, which is indispensable for this technique, I try to pin down immediate reality on canvas in bright colours, using a dynamic style of painting.

Using unusual tools, very many layers of paint are added or removed with the undermost ones being preserved, thus shining through, which is important to keep the paintings' vividness.

For applying and removing I work with all kinds of instruments, sometimes even my bare hands. Occasionally I also wash canvases with a water hose. This often leads to unexpected very nice, even crazy results, something you cannot plan logically.

This kind of work, which is linked to realistic motives, is still spontaneous in certain ways. I try to capture the spontaneous situation that I experienced before in reality, to then preserve it in this spontaneous and dynamic technique without losing the liveliness of the real situation.

This way of painting is very much fun and I thank Voka who introduced me to it himself.

A good painting needs an individual character, genuine ideas, energetic design, power, interesting structures and changes, strong depth effects, bold color nuances and a harmony of contrasts.

Thus matter and emotions combine in the creative process.

To me, every painting is to have its own secret, its surface is to look alive, tell a story to the spectator. I want it to create a feeling of "freedom and joy of living through creativity".

Let me quote Alexander Jeanmaire:

"When you create you bring something into being - something that comes from inside you. ...You may create something you see, hear, a product, but also something invisible, like a mathematic answer, satisfaction or inner freedom. What is important is that it corresponds with your innermost destiny, your real self, and is courageous, unused, genuine (not a copy or mass production), and, if you are lucky, maybe even new, revolutionary and provocative.

... But this is exactly what makes possible a mind-expanding perception which transcends reason and thus meets the artist's standards concerning art.

... the father of all "killers of creativity" is our intellect with its limiting, pre-conditioned concepts, opinions and morality. .... To be creative one needs to be free, wide open, that means void."

I wish you all

a colorful life

full of creativity, spontaneity,

idealism, individuality,

positive thinking and joy of living,

yours