Clouds Milking Trees
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Most of the times I collect my inspirations for my paintings while I am traveling. I come across a situation and sometimes it is a special kind of light, the pattern of a floor or the faded color on a wall that catches my attention and lets me take out my camera to snap a picture. Last year I was hiking on one of the Canary Islands and I came across trees that the locals called “cloud milking trees”. They had long pine needles and when the clouds where low, the needles combed through the clouds and little drops collected at the tips of the needles.
I really liked this image of collecting and absorbing from nature and transferring intangible athmosphere into something concrete, as I too, paint what I have seen, discovered or experienced myself and try to catch the specific mood of a situation in my paintings.
Back in my studio these captured photos are a reference and a collection of ideas to work from. I pick intuitivly what interests me most in the moment, and by combining different painting techniques I try to transfer this moment onto the canvas. In the beginning I work quiet experimental, splashing and moving color across the canvas, later I work more precise to capture more concrete and figurative details, always interweaving the more abstract parts with the figurative ones. I rarely paint human beings, but their presence and their traces are often visible. To me my paintings are like an empty stage. The spectators can make up their mind about past or future stories that might happen or might have had happened.
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