You live abroad. Does this have an impact on your work?

Being a foreigner is quite fruitful. People can't really know me and I can't really know them. After a number of years what used to be familiar becomes alien too. While you're away from home you're changing, and what is home is changing too but without you. You can never go back. It's a strange place to be in, a slightly uneasy place, like you turn into your own twin brother who you got separated from at birth. Physically and ideologically you are unsure where you stand.

How did you become an artist?

I'm a painter. Artist sounds lofty. Where I come from people get suspicious if someone wants to become an artist. I always enjoyed painting and that's a good enough reason for me. There's the childish pleasure you get when you finally hold something in your hands and you can say: I did it. That's me. The good thing is I wasn't conned into unrealistic aspirations. I was never going to be a popstar. The term artist I find unfortunate indeed. It suggests that these are individuals elevated above the average. I have a problem with airy rhetoric of which there is so much in this business but I've learned to see the funny side.

Are you religious? Some of your paintings seem to have a religious undertone. I'm thinking of The Mountains with its allusions to Noah's Ark and the Nativity; or The Plateau, which could also be called The Crucifixion. The series is called Heaven, Earth and the Question of Transport.

Religion was part of my education. It represents an incredibly rich cultural heritage. That's where we come from, and a proper use of tradition makes you more not less critical and independent in society. And yet I never got spiritually engaged in any religion and I can only speculate why not. The rebel in me is drawn to a live without the consolation of religion. A while ago I read a review about some paintings and it said that they re-examined classic religious images. I liked the phrase and thought: could this be what I’m doing?

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