At the age of 3, I started to paint, as does every child. Yet I belong to those people who never can stop. When I was a child, I used to spend my holidays at my grandparents house near Dresden. They encouraged my interest in painting by taking me to see the Dresden Art Galleries. At a later date, I would often spend whole days in front of selected paintings to learn the technique of the great old and new masters. Three artists fascinated me the most: Albrecht Duerer (1471-1528), Hans Holbein the Elder (1465-1524) and Otto Dix (1891-1969).

When I was young, I copied the paintings of the old masters so as to better understand their feelings when painting the pictures centuries earlier. Later, I painted in a more abstract way, because I found the precision disturbing. During the last thirty years, I have no longer been satisfied with flat and diluted shapes in my pictures. I need the detail to express my feelings. Working with portraits and human physiognomy fascinates me. Not the description of the surface, but what lies hidden beyond is what interests me: The fragility of the human being, the factual portrayal of individual truth.

In my work I am trying to combine a contemporary view on life with the "New Functionalism" of the twentieth of the 20th century and the art of the Renaissance. To describe my art I use the notion of New Realism and recently, I have concentrated on portraits, sea pieces and still-lifes.

I can only set a functionalism, a powerful silent against today´s inflation of pictures. I believe that it is the attraction of the direct view which enables insights into the soul. When colour becomes not only skin, cloth, water and sky but also soul, then I have overcome the empty panel.