Landschaften

Parellel to the styllistic and technical developments of my Portrait series, the surrealism of the Dragon (2002) and Ireland (2002) series evolved into the ordinary, realistic scenes of the watercolor series Canal (2002-3), Berlin (2002), and Boenicke (2003), and finally, into the aerial landscapes of the Prag (2005) series. Nonetheless, the themes remained consistent, namely how I could paint the extraordinary in the ordinary, both the invisible and the visible realities.

The Dragon series consists of the paintings Dragon #1-10 which were created in New Mexico (U.S.A.) in 2001, and the works Dragon #11-20 which followed in Berlin in 2002. Visually, each was inspired from my experiences of the wide open sky and high desert of the New Mexican landscape, where I could easily feel and see the interrelationship of the heavens and the earth. The content, though, as the title suggests, relates to the religious and political struggle in Europe during the Middle Ages between the pagan and Christian cultures, especially how the 'Dragon' in the earth was viewed as the source of all evil (Christian theology), as compared to the pagan view of the Dragon being a source of life and power. I expressed this dynamic/conflict in this series through the use of the relationship between the sky and the earth, each to symbolize, respectively, the power and beauty of Christian and pagan religion, as well, to show the division between them and yet their underlying unity.

The Ireland (2002) series pays homage to the ancient wisdom and spiritual vision of those pre-Christian religions who have now become extinct. They expressed my sadness of the Christian biases against the world's indigenous peoples, past and present, and against their inherent value and right to co-exist in Christian societies. Ireland represented for me the last battleground in Europe where the indigenous culture, the Celts, were assimilated into the Christian dominated world.

The Dragon and Ireland series were quite political, and ended the chapter in my work where I stated openly an agenda and a political position. Thereafter, the following watercolor series went back in the direction towards realism, to the contemporary times and scenes of my everyday life. This can be seen in the Canal, Berlin and Boenicke series, where, like snapshots of my surroundings, I contrasted the fleeting beauty of the bright, sunlight and the warmth of a summer's day against the backdrop of the ordinary scenes in and around Berlin. Thus, I began, inspired by the position of documentary photography, to give only a visible, faithful representation of our daily life.

The Prague (2005-6) series serves also as snapshots; yet from an unfamiliar, aerial perspective, they reveal the unusual patterns and configurations of the various housing developments within and in contrast to the city's green spaces.

I intend to translate the realistic painting style of the watercolor and Prague series back into the former, political style of the earlier Ireland series, but without being dogmatic and judgemental.