Artist Statement
My painting seeks to tell a story, to start a conversation.
Sights I have seen, physical sensations and emotions, interpersonal relationships, fragments from the history of art - all of these find their way into the painting. Sometimes the image, the story, is the starting point for the work, and other times the painting begins with a stain, a color, a shape, and from these the image emerges. The images are ultimately organized in two main ways - paintings on paper or canvas, and site-dependent pictorial installations, in which the parts of the painting are placed or disassembled in space, allowing viewers to walk around them, create a variety of compositions, observe from different directions and thus take an active role in the dialogue with the painting.
Many of the paintings and pictorial installations intertwine images from the history of art, especially from the modernism of the early twentieth century. Works by Rousseau, Picasso, Bonnard and others inspire me, but the way they depict female figures makes me feel the need to respond to my male painter ancestors from my perspective as a woman, as a mother.
The paintings are generally characterized by seductive, almost cheerful colors. But the images deal with the less visible sides of motherhood. Loneliness, anger and helplessness take center stage alongside joy, softness and compassion. The bright colors create a burden and a feeling of suffocation. These are also expressed in the closed compositions. I am interested in the relationship between the figures inhabiting the painting and the frame, or in other words - how to squeeze a woman into a rectangle.
In the pictorial installations I eliminate the frame. The painting relates to space and the body of the viewers. The images are partial, cut, and seek completion through connections to other parts or through imagination. Viewers are invited to move within the painting, create new compositions or complete the painting with their bodies. For me, the painting installations are a way to think about painting, to challenge the thought of it. I have a passion for bringing painting to life, to create a world through painting that you can enter. In contrast to a regular painting that can be viewed from one perspective, I want to create a painting that allows for multiple perspectives, thereby giving more power and freedom to the viewers.