Gates, thresholds and transitions keep returning in my work: openings through which you can pass from the real into the imagined, and places to escape to, to catch your breath, and perhaps to hatch out of what came before. Gardens, distant shores and glittering tents.
The imagined and the real walk side by side in my work. The works are playful and full of childlike curiosity, but the naivety is a conscious choice: through play, I can also speak about what is broken in the world, or where I would like to escape to.
When I begin, I rarely know where I will end up. A work might start from a flicker of sunlight on the studio wall, a butterfly in the garden, or a news story that keeps nagging at me. My way of working is layered. I paint and draw, add and take away. For a long time I don't know what will finally emerge. Often the image only reveals itself in the last layers; sometimes it appears right away. Something left underneath still shows through, a little like a memory that refuses to disappear completely.
Chance is there the whole time. Chance brings with it details I could never have planned, and sometimes it forces me to start over.
The rest I leave to the viewer. What they find in the works, I cannot know. Perhaps something they thought was already lost?