EN
Beyond The Symptom
For several years now, I have been suffering from an anxiety disorder.
Due to this, I often experience physical complaints such as nausea
and stomach ache whenever I leave the house. My disorder plays in specifically on the fear of the results of these symptoms:
a fear of vomiting
or incontinence
in a
public place.
As these symptoms grew more severe,
I began to isolate myself indoors.
However, at a certain point, the need arose to paint outdoors. I felt the need to paint the outside world as I observed it, in order to combat my anxiety.
I wanted to draw viewers into the landscape as I experience it. I paint places I consider to be ‘safe zones’: places I can escape to if things ever go wrong…
In this way, I want to share my view of the world and of landscape in general. Working from perception, I’m able to describe things from
the reality
of my own subjective framework. That is why it has become so important
to paint ‘en plein-air’; to describe and simultaneously combat my symptoms.
Of course, painting these ‘escape routes’ is merely a starting point
in the act of painting. Essentially, I try to capture my own challenges, while also facing newer challenges that the landscape presents to me as a painter.
These ‘painting problems’ are separate from my own personal issues.
Every object can be painted differently, and it has turned into my eternal quest to find or create a combination of signs that meet
the requirements that the object has of me
.