ABOUT PAINTING
In the 80s when I started my career abstract painting was the major style and in the art school we were taught to think only about colours. I wasn’t against it, but in my heart I knew my way was figurative and that there’s more in painting than just beautiful colours.
I admired painters like Francis Bacon and Philip Guston for their bravery, and like them, I used my memory and imagination to make my pictures. After seeing art in Italy and Spain, I realized that I wasn’t satisfied with my paintings anymore. The old masters made me reconsider the standards of painting in a whole different light. I felt I was stuck with my own work.
I began studying drawing again and when I painted in my studio, I used only live models.
Since I started working from perception, I noticed how it was still possible to develop my skills.
In the beginning it happened in great leaps and later on in tiny steps. I didn’t feel stuck anymore because with regular work it was possible to achieve new things in drawing, in composition and also in colour.
Now it’s very difficult to paint something that isn’t there. I need a real subject I can scrutinize and best of all, I enjoy doing it. People often mention the word realism when they talk about my paintings, but I’m not sure if I fall into that category. Some of my heroes like Caravaggio, Titian, Velazquez and Rembrandt had a great amount of realism in their work, but still they dressed up their models and built up sets around them. Even Morandi, who I deeply admire, coloured some of his objects with white or grey to get the right kind of tone. When we work up what we see into a painting it always becomes more or less an interpretation and in that sense it is also expressive. I think it’s up to an artist to arrange and modify whatever he paints as much as he needs to find his own truth.