For my graduation series of works I decided not to philosophize with the selection of motives and themes. I decided to paint intimate moments inside my house in which I was born and still live, and immediate surrounding, as this is what I know and expirience unrelentingly. Analogous to the often heard advice for writters "writte about what you know". If you don't find beauty in your immediate surrounding where you open your eyes in the morning, you will hardly find it anywhere, not in Venice, nor in Paris. Subject matter is close to you. For now, I paint the impression of what is in front of me, very close to me. And going closer and closer I plan to sometime paint what is inside of my mind. Meaning: full abstraction.
My painting, although currently still somewhat traditional and academic, partly because of...well, academic obligations, and partly because of nostalgic forces acting out my initial fascination with classical painting as a young boy, nevertheless contain sparks of my desire to liberate my expression, hints of my uncontrolled idiosyncratic movements. My notebooks are being rapidly filled with observations, logical conclusions, clear and concrete ideas that will stay in my mind as I gradually strip away the unnecessities from my painting and create by free play within and upon the fundamental ideas in the upcoming times.
Unpopular opinion: I think that originality is overvalued nowadays. Although it is a factor, a huge factor, undoubtedly, it's not THE factor. Immanuel Kant observed that nonsense can be original. "Craters allow quantum consciousness to harness misleading dealers of HDMI cables" is a perfectly valid sentence grammatically. Probably no one ever put those words in that order before. Truly original sentence. Nonsense, nevertheless. Dogmatic originality, as an end in itself, seems forced, inhibiting organic instances of original ideas, and neglecting other qualitative factors. Depending on criteria, when low, painting a stick man in the background of the copy of Mona Lisa could be considered original if no one did it before. On the other extreme of the spectrum, painting can not be original if it's oil on canvas. Blood on a goats wool? Now that may be somewhat original. Though an attempt at banalization, I consider it seriously on second thought. Granted, this opinion could very well be a product of a defence mechanism undervaluing my originality deficit. lol I have original ideas... they are just not realized yet haha
