Everything, Everywhere

How do you understand the concept of “freedom” in relation to human-environment relationships?

I do not understand freedom as boundlessness, but rather as the possibility to act consciously while being in harmony with oneself and one’s surroundings.

You only work with small and very large formats. Why is there no middle?

I am interested in extremes, peripheral areas, and transitions. Small and large formats each create a very distinct physical and spatial experience, whereas the medium format often remains somewhere between these poles for me. I therefore consciously work with these opposites and the tension that arises between them.

To what extent do elements of film and theatre flow into your compositions, as they did in the work of your teacher Valérie Favre?

Film and theatre are important sources of inspiration for me because they open up different ways of seeing and composing images. I am particularly interested in staging, light, and the way tension or atmosphere can be created solely through pictorial spaces. These experiences shape the way I develop compositions and think of images as open, multilayered spaces.

You went to New York for an exchange – what were you able to bring back into your practice?

The exchange in New York shaped my practice, particularly in terms of discipline, technique, and working in solitude. Studying art in the United States was much more structured and demanding than what I had previously been used to. At first, it was a major adjustment and challenge to adapt to this new way of working. At the same time, this structure helped me develop greater consistency and discipline in my own process.

At the same time, I was in a place that was far removed from my familiar surroundings and, through this, allowed me a new form of freedom. This distance encouraged me to trust myself more, make my own decisions, and recognise my personal boundaries – and sometimes consciously cross them. This experience strengthened my independence as an artist and showed me how important it is to trust one’s own process.

You often speak of painting as a practice in itself. What do you mean by that?

The process of painting itself interests me as an independent practice. It is complex and multilayered and encompasses different levels – temporal, physical, and mental. For me, the act of painting is an intense and demanding process. Many insights do not necessarily emerge in the moment of working, but often only afterwards, when I look back at the painting from a distance.

Since my working process is very intuitive and dependent on the particular moment, every encounter with the canvas is different. I never fully know what awaits me or where a painting will develop. This openness and uncertainty are precisely a central part of painting for me: trusting that through the process, something can unfold that was not visible or plannable from the beginning.

You like to work with the classical genre of landscape. What fascinates you about it?

Landscape is a place of longing for me. At the same time, there is something mysterious and uncanny about it. The familiar can suddenly become strange, and beauty can turn into discomfort. Here too, the tension that runs through my entire practice becomes apparent: attraction and irritation, proximity and distance exist simultaneously within the same image. Landscape thus becomes a space in which opposites encounter one another and meaning remains open, in a continuous process of transformation.

Gradations of red and green dominate your pictorial landscapes. What moves you about this colour palette?

At the beginning of my art studies, I worked exclusively in shades of red. I was fascinated by the broad range and ambiguity of this colour – how it can appear brutal and vulnerable, bloody and violent, but also warm, bodily, and intimate at the same time. I was very interested in these opposites within a single colour.

Over time, I learned to use this interplay of meanings more consciously and to incorporate the effect of colours into my compositions in a more deliberate way. Green has become an important counterpart for me. As a complementary colour, it creates tension, but at the same time brings a certain calmness and balance to the pictorial spaces. The interplay of red and green allows me to oscillate between intensity and calm, proximity and distance.

Some recurring symbols appear in your works – on the one hand, rabbits, and on the other, a moon. What lies behind them?

I like working with recurring motifs. I am interested in repetition as an artistic principle – it refers to continuity, to the connection between time, history, and memory. This is why certain symbols repeatedly appear in my works, particularly the moon and the rabbit.

Both motifs have a personal meaning for me, while at the same time representing broader themes. The moon refers to transformation, cycles, and constant change, while the rabbit stands for the mysterious, the uncanny, and the fantastic. Through abstraction, however, these symbols remain open. They oscillate between meaning and form, between personal association and general legibility, without committing themselves to a single interpretation.

Alongside painting, you work with etchings, which you print on paper as well as on textiles – how did this come about?

I discovered etching for myself in the final year of my studies. For me, it is an ideal way of transferring drawing – which has always been an important part of my practice – into another form and materialising it.

I primarily consider my etchings to be drawings. In contrast to painting, which for me moves more freely beyond a linear conception of time and can be repeatedly altered through layering, drawing carries something immediate within it. It captures a particular moment, gesture, or movement. For me, printing is a way of manifesting and preserving this moment.

Printing on textiles and subsequently stretching or distorting them over wooden panels opens up another layer of working. Through the alteration of the material, the perception of the motif also shifts – the drawing does not remain static, but is transformed again through the process of stretching and deformation.

To what extent does negotiating identities play a role for you and your work?

I do not understand identity as something fixed, but as something that is constantly changing. I believe that everything is interconnected and that our understanding of ourselves always emerges in relation to our environment and our history. This openness and mutability of identity is also reflected in my painting.

My paintings are in a constant process of transformation: forms change, meanings shift, and nothing remains completely closed or concluded. In this sense, painting becomes a space in which identity is not defined, but negotiated and experienced anew again and again.

What do you wish for when someone looks at your work?

I am happy when my works trigger an experience that goes beyond simply understanding them. For me, it is about evoking feelings and associations and opening up the gaze.