I'm Trying To Paint A Picture Of

My Paintings Are Wiser Than I Am.

I Find The Romantic Period Extraordinarily Interesting. My Landscapes Have Connections With Romanticism: At Times I Feel A Real Desire For, An Attraction To, This Period, And Some Of My Pictures Are A Homage To Caspar David Friedrich.

I Began In 1976, With Small Abstract Paintings That Allowed Me To Do What I Had Never Let Myself Do: Put Something Down At Random. And Then, Of Course, I Realized That It Never Can Be Random. It Was All A Way Of Opening A Door For Me. If I Don't Know What's Coming - That Is, If I Have No Hard-and-fast Image, As I Have With A Photographic Original - Then Arbitrary Choice And Chance Play An Important Part.

... Landscapes Or Still-lifes I Paint In Between The Abstract Works; They Constitute About One-tenth Of My Production. On The One Hand They Are Useful, Because I Like To Work From Nature - Although I Do Use A Photograph - Because I Think That Any Detail From Nature Has A Logic I Would Like To See In Abstraction As Well.

Pictures Are The Idea In Visual Or Pictorial Form; And The Idea Has To Be Legible, Both In The Individual Picture And In The Collective Context - Which Presupposes, Of Course, That Words Are Used To Convey Information About The Idea And The Context. However, None Of This Means That Pictures Function As Illustrations Of An Idea: Ultimately, They Are The Idea. Nor Is The Verbal Formulation Of The Idea A Translation Of The Visual: It Simply Bears A Certain Resemblance To The Meaning Of The Idea. It Is An Interpretation, Literally A Reflection.