Statement of Purpose

Over the last four years in Berlin (2002-05), my paintings have dealt with the duality of the human condition: how a person experiences both the temporal emotions of daily life simultaneously with the bliss and love of an eternal Timelessness(or God). The challenge was how I could find, in plastic terms, a visual vocabulary to represent this duality without being dogmatic or judgmental.

With the inspiration of the German expressionists and the Bruecke group of the twentieth century, I chose the traditional woodblock print to capture the humble, simple nature of the figure, combined with watercolor washes below and oil painting above to express the dynamic power of the supernatural space in and around the figure. The use of printmaking had the additional advantage of offering a neutral, non-judgmental approach, free of the artist's 'touch', which I used to combat being dogmatic but to evoke qualities of humanity and humility instead. Furthermore, the technical evolution in my work: from the dark prints in the St. Benedict's Patient #6310, Dragon, Ireland, and Jesus series, to the colorful prints in the Arbeiter("Worker"), Koenigin("Queen"), and Love series; underscored an ongoing shift in my consciousness, as I focused away from the individual scene/figure to an universal, historical context.

In the Jan and Five Seasons series, the perspective shifted back to the portrayal of an individual. But, since I repeated the portraits hundreds and dozens of times in each respective series, I placed the figure in a duality: between having a unique and a group identity. In this way, I opened a kind of Pandora's box: within a simple, straightforward painting series, pops out some critical questions: what is truth? Can we perceive it?

What began in 2002 - with my painting an invisible world alongside our physical reality- broadened to how I envision our past and history in general, and finally, to questioning the accuracy of human perception altogether, how our ability is flawed to truly perceive our reality! This last development, or most recent shift in my consciousness, evolved from the painting of Jan(2005) and the subsequent series, One Second, One Life(2005) and Ten Seconds(2005), where I was challenged for months to accurately portray the likeness of my friend Jan. I learned about the hindrances involved, basically, how easily my perception of Jan was influenced by my judgments and prejudices. I thus questioned any possible honest attempt of my seeing free of this influence in my head, and charted into the fields of quantum physics and perception itself. Interestingly, in the Jan series, my process became then the inspiration and content of the work.

As I foresee, my paintings will continue the themes of perception of truth and paranormal realities, and, technically, blend realism with surrealism, or the ordinary and the extraordinary simultaneously.