Working Process

I can be “myself” and enjoy the freedom by creating without limits with colors, materials, textures, ideas and to play with the composition.

I let intuition and the joy of expressions guide me, as well as an innate sense of composition and feel for colors.

I try to capture my feelings in my paintings, the “now”, the emotions and the spirituality.

I work at home in my studio or in my countless and always changing outdoor “nature studios” in the world around me.

I never know when I begin a piece, where I’ll go or how I’ll get there. Sometimes I work by starting with an idea, a feeling or an image that compels me. Other times I choose a special technique as a starting point, a photo, color scheme which “speaks” to me or just “the moment” of being outside in the tremendous beauty of nature.
If I don’t like the result I’ll revise the work one or more time until it ‘feels’ right.

Depending on the project, my mood or working situation I experiment with different techniques:

I try to capture the texture of natural surfaces like flowing water, movement of sand dunes and structures of wood, rocks and pebbles. With lots of paint, I apply a “colored landscape” on the canvas, move it around dynamically by using water and sand, mixed with binder and pigments, to achieve a relief effect.

In addition, I enjoy adding elements of collage into the composition by incorporating different materials (sand, papers, newspaper, wood, fabric, metal, bark).

Another challenge is to “imitate” the texture from man-made subjects, like old walls, tiles or rusty doors

I like using symbols, which bring a spiritual influence into my work, for ex. spirals, as a symbol for growing, development, endlessness, or a circle to symbolize unity and concentration.

As well I often incorporate numbers, letters and written fragments from different cultural backgrounds (European, Arabic, Chinese, and Hindi, Rune alphabet). It is not only an esthetic and exciting enrichment to the whole composition, but sometimes I use these elements to lead to a different interpretation and perspective of the work.

In the last 7 years, I got tremendous inspiration from Oman, the country in Middle East where I lived before. It offered me the richness of the Arabic culture along with the amazing nature (desert, the beaches and mountains), diversity of people and bright colours. Since autumn 2010 I currently live in Norway, a new challenge for inspiration with its rough, powerful archaic nature and dramatic changes of light, depending on the weather conditions.