About Me
I have been artistically creative since I was at school. I mainly made charcoal drawings, watercolor paintings, clay and enamel works during that time. Art in high school taught me a lot about art history, picture interpretation and composition.
After leaving school, I didn't choose to study art, but instead studied economics and, after graduating, joined the family business for which I worked as managing director for 34 years. There was no more time for art.
Over 20 years ago, I felt the need to express myself artistically again and took up oil painting. I started with figurative painting, but quickly realized that abstract art appealed to me more. It took me a few years to move from figurative painting to free abstract painting. Abstract painting was difficult for me at first and I attended painting courses with several art teachers to practise abstract expression. Over time, I deepened my palette knife and squeegee technique. I discovered acrylic pouring on the Internet and was immediately impressed by the great cells in the pictures. However, the paint spilled on the walls, floor and my clothes was too much for me and I came to mixed media via acrylic paints.
In seminars, workshops and master classes in the USA, Canada, Germany and Switzerland, I acquired knowledge of techniques and materials, refined them and developed my own style.
What I like about mixed media is that you can combine many techniques and materials with each other, which means that new ideas are always developing. I enjoy experimenting and combining. That's how I came to encaustic and I'm absolutely thrilled with it! Here, too, you can combine many techniques. What could be more obvious than incorporating encaustic into mixed media?
I'm inspired by nature, which I can enjoy in abundance here at home, because I live with my family in a rural environment. Lots of land, lots of forest, lots of fields, but unfortunately not enough water! Because that's what I love most, preferably the sea! That's why I keep producing paintings of the sea, as oil paintings, as abstract fillers, as resin paintings; soon also in encaustic. It's not just the sea that inspires me with its dynamics and colors. There are so many materials, patterns, textures and colors in nature that I am always coming up with new ideas. I love to observe how light and colors change depending on the weather conditions, how materials change in wet and dry conditions, how light and shadow make the textures appear different, and above all I love reflections in water, be it in still water like a lake or pond, but also in moving water with distorted mirror images. And the glitter of sunlight on the sea is my particular highlight.
I try to incorporate all of this into my design. Mostly in abstract form, because I want to give the viewer space to bring their own imagination into the picture and thus build a connection to it. I am happy to hear what a viewer can see in a picture. Because everyone finds different things in a rather abstract picture, depending on their own experiences and memories.
