The composition of this painting makes your eyes wander around, just like how I imagine the swans to move around the body of water. The edges of my paintings are of great importance, especially to this one, where it’s the center of the painting. The line captures your eyes and holds them for a moment. This leaves space for introspection.

I dedicate this painting to my twin sister. We go all the way back in the womb. All the magical things that have happened there I have never really forgotten. My body still remembers it, like a dream. So how do I escape the dream and enter reality? I sometimes cut into my paintings. As I cut into my painting, I cut my way through my dream reality, until a new one appears.

Cutouts and stencils enter, mark, and leave my paintings in a very spontaneous way. They show the painting as a result of certain actions and they clearly indicate the steps that have been taken throughout the process. As a cutout repeats itself, it changes meaning. Just as a cloud can also be a pool of water, everyone and everything is ambiguous and in a stage of becoming.

My paintings are sometimes nothing more than stains, spots, and smudges. Somewhat like the Vera Icon or the Shroud of Turin. Their arrangements result in an image of a utopian world. Following the darkest blacks in this painting feels like you’re running in the field by yourself.

When I am on a boat, I always get carried away by the shadow play of the sailors. I think we must never forget that even our own shadows have no defined shape. Just like our history, it changes all the time.

I often refer to bathers in my painting. The water in which they swim is the same wetness of my paint. I like to work with this wet material. It’s so different from all the dry material we’re surrounded with on a daily basis. In paradise, there is also always the water. Life descends from this water.

We’re walking into the jungle of Colombia for three days now. I sit next to you on a rock, all wet from taking a swim. Suddenly a gigantic leaf is falling all the way from the tops of the trees and then it finally meets the water. We’re both silent for a few minutes. I ask you if you’ve seen it. Of course you did. That leaf is still falling through my work, and I am waiting for the right moment to ask you whether you’ve seen it.

Is the paradise made by human hands a construct or is it an almost immaterial image that was not created by human hands? The archaic figures in combination with the spray paint make my work a little ghostly. Something that appears and disappears throughout history.