Green earth, light ochre, Kassler brown, and umber. Lemon yellow, English red, sap green, and titanium. Ultramarine—a little chrome oxide green.

I mix the colors in the center of the canvas. I use the smallest round brushes I have. Their short, partially dried bristles allow me to smear the undiluted oil paint onto the canvas with a twist. I then model this small pile of paint: elevations and depressions, grooves, spirals, and the like. I remove the mass with the brush and apply it again in another place. I smooth the surface with a palette knife or scrape off paint. With a wide bristle brush, I thin the paint with stroking movements, distort it, or mix it into a colorful paste in the same place. A constant process of adding and removing.

The center is changing. An almost round, nearly closed shape is forming. I search for ways to break out of the center again. I turn the canvas in search of a motif that reveals itself to me through the color.
Having found it, surprised and fascinated, I once again draw winding, curious lines out of the center to conquer new space.
This association with a landscape, evoked by color. Clearings, fields, hills, or thickets appear before my eyes, as do gorges and stumps. But that is not the goal: to represent the exterior of a landscape. Landscape as an organic, abstract being that grows, trembles, twitches, breathes, stands still, and quietly continues to move forward. So I paint over, blur, and distort again. Everything serves as a pretext to continue painting. To stand in front of the canvas and watch my application of paint attentively. I lose myself in the painting process.

The titles are created parallel to the work. I play with sound fragments: rinkringalm, orlampsas, ritsch, knautsch. The sound created the titles.
I have created my own words, proper names that refer to nothing but themselves. The series is called Chromosome, ancient Greek for color body. In biology, it refers to the part of the cell where information about the inheritance of traits is stored.

Studio | 11.2020