Inspiration
My paintings grow from a curiosity about what lies beneath the surface.
I am inspired by the idea that an image does not simply show something, but can also reveal something. Sometimes I do not know exactly where a painting is going when I begin. I start by looking, feeling, moving and responding to what emerges. In that process, something can become visible that is not easily expressed in words.
My work is influenced by three people who, each in their own way, explored art and the inner world of the human being: Rudolf Steiner, Carl Gustav Jung and Arno Stern.
What speaks to me in Rudolf Steiner’s work is his idea that art is not only about what we see with our eyes. There is also an inner reality. Form, colour, movement and rhythm can make that reality perceptible. This connects deeply with my own experience: painting can be more than creating a beautiful image. It can be a way of bringing something that lives within us into the world.
Carl Gustav Jung taught me to look at images differently. An image can have a language of its own. Colours, shapes and symbols can tell us something about ourselves, even when we have not consciously intended them to. For that reason, I do not always feel the need to understand a painting immediately. I find the unknown intriguing. Sometimes the meaning only reveals itself later, when I look at the painting again.
From Arno Stern, I am particularly inspired by the freedom to paint without having to know what the final result should be. He discovered the importance of having the space to follow one’s own trace, without judgement and without the question of whether something is beautiful, good or wrong. I strongly recognise this in my own painting process. When I can let go of the need to create something specific, space opens up for the unexpected.
For me, these three sources of inspiration come together in one important principle: a painting does not only have to express something; it can also reveal something.
That is why I try not to control the painting too much while I am working. I listen to what the image gives back to me. One colour asks for another. A shape wants to remain, or perhaps disappear. Sometimes a tension emerges that I do not understand at first, but somehow feels exactly right.
For me, painting becomes a meeting between the conscious and the unconscious, between feeling and thinking, between what I already know and what is still waiting to reveal itself.
My paintings are therefore not illustrations of an idea. They are more like a journey towards something that reveals itself along the way.
Perhaps that is what inspires me most: that within every human being there is an inner world that cannot always be told directly, but can sometimes reveal itself through colour, form, movement and image.