ARTIST STATEMENT

In my work, I am searching not for thoughts but the feelings. This is the century of the mind thoughts, concepts, and ideas are tied to our time and location.

Feelings, however, are centuries old. If you take the Egyptian or Baroque period and compare it to now, we still feel the same emotions—anger, love and hate. These feelings reside in all of us, everywhere and throughout time. I am interested in the human itself, not in their surroundings. I try to work out of instinct without thinking.

Thinking is judging—judging my dancer, judging what I draw, judging how I move my hand—which results in drawings that are a reflection of what I know, but not what I meet and see. To stop my brain thinking and judging, I have created a method for working. I ask dancers to dance for me for 4 hours to music the dancer chooses, or we choose together. For the first few hours we are still in the thinking stage, but slowly on, mainly as we get tired we forget to think and it’s then that the dancer and I can truly meet each other. I go into a state of trance where I meet the feelings of the dancer. Then I can draw what I really see. My drawings are of that meeting, capturing the feelings of the dancer.

I work with dancers because if someone sits still they automatically start to think. Dancers talk and express their feelings through movement, sometimes way better than words can convey. So we create together, with the music, a silent conversation. The drawings have a story, but one that is felt, not thought.

Through my many years of working, I see that with each dancer we develop a different theme—such as Taksu, flying, drama, loneliness, women’s right and love. But we only identify the theme after a long time working together. It often has nothing to do with my first impression of the dancer but comes about by accident.

My work is evolving to an unforeseen next step. I see drawing as a journey. I also feel my drawings are accidents.

So concept or conceptual art I see as a fashion bound to a specific time, but works based on feelings I believe are timeless.