In your recent work, especially in your latest exhibition with the gallery 'Night Emails to Friends', figures often appear in groups, sharing meals or longing together. Now, they seem more solitary, directly engaging the viewer. Can you expand on this shift?
This wasn't something intentional but I saw it later on, that there was a change. The characters live in pairs in most of the paintings, they are not necessarily lovers but they share intimacy, rooms, looks. After painting a lot of longing characters having a strong introspective posture, eyes closed, arms surrounding etc., they have now entered a more active state. They are less inclined to solitarily reflect and are more interested in engaging with their surroundings. They look at us and at the world. It's an attempt to be more in action, possibly an urge.
In your new work, many of your compositions resemble house-like structures where multiple scenes unfold simultaneously. What role do space and time play in your paintings?
The home is a theme that is always in the back of my head and in this context it took the shape of actual house shaped frames in some of the paintings. We see different small actions depicted on the same canvas but they are not necessarily linked, and there are also areas that are not as specific or recognizable, like spaces for breathing or punctuations.
With time I started to think of all of these "windows" as layers. Foregrounds, backgrounds, and a bunch of middle grounds. They are transitional spaces, moments to become, moments in between, metamorphosizes. I do not depict actual events rooted in specific time and space but things that belong to the world of sensations, impressions, feelings.
It is a construction that I have used in previous works but I did not have the same intention with it - or maybe I did but I was not aware of it yet. This is something I find interesting as well, to go back to old motives and to reactivate them, so I can change the narrative, I can open it up.
You frequently return to the landscape of your family's home in the South of France. What draws you to this place, and what does painting a landscape mean to you?
I started to be interested in the landscape motive in general when I went to France to work on the exhibition Night Emails to Friends. I was not only visiting but I was painting too this time, and changing the studio environment always influences what will exist on the canvas. While before the scenes were mostly set indoors, this exhibition was all set outdoors.
