There are endless ways to spend one’s time and build a career. Painting may not be among the best choices. The process of creating a painting is free from any external compulsion — and that is precisely why it is difficult.
To practice one’s art consistently requires an absurd amount of faith — faith that these works will one day leave the studio, be exhibited in a gallery, or sold. Yet there is no guarantee that this will ever happen. A person who devotes their life to producing useless, yet auratic objects, entrusts their fate to the whims of chance. That is why I think painting is a practice of loving something that exists, even though it doesn’t have to. It is a difficult kind of love, but I see its value.Another difficulty lies in the fact that one must speak about their painting — and this, after all, is where the story about language begins.
I think a lot about the words I should use to speak about my paintings, and I fear that this might betray a lack of faith in the expressive power of the painterly gesture. I would be terribly ashamed if that were true. Usually, words come one after another, and still nothing is really known about the painting.
And a story that unfolds for no clear reason sooner or later gives rise to the question of who is speaking.
One could argue that the act of painting itself is incredibly egocentric, because the path of a painting goes more or less like this:
I devote time to my own creative expression — I decide to seek exposure — I exhibit the painting — I talk about it — and that talk inevitably turns into speaking about my own experiences and reflections, that is, about myself.
The whole process could be called a loop of narcissistic chatter — but fortunately, there are viewers, and it is their perspective, their encounters with the work, that allow my painting to evolve.That is why I am more interested in the way a painting’s narrative unfolds than in its actual content. It is not at all obvious to me how illustrative a painting should be in order to carry any meaning. The capacity to convey meaning still feels like an elusive quality to me, and I envy painters who do not worry about representation. Perhaps painting, for me, is an attempt to understand why I still want to tell stories at all.