Biography

Between Germany and France, my work draws on two landscapes that could not be more different, and yet speak the same language of light.
I grew up in the Lower Rhine region, surrounded by gentle, open country, wide grasslands, seasonal wetlands, pollard willows, and long avenues of plane trees. These quiet, pastoral landscapes were my earliest source of inspiration, and nature has remained the constant thread through everything I have made since. Later, after moving to the Rhône-Alpes region, I fell in love with the landscapes of France, rolling hills, vineyards, deep forests, and limestone escarpments rising out of the vines. Both regions have shaped me not only through their natural beauty, but through the weight of their cultural and historical heritage.

My artistic education began close to home. Growing up near the Lower Rhine, I was introduced early to the tradition of the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, and to the work of Carl Weisgerber and Max Liebermann, whose paintings of the Rhine carry a quiet lyricism and a deep sensitivity to light and atmosphere. That sensitivity shaped how I still look at the natural world. At the same time, I was drawn to the later, more radical voices to emerge from the Academy and from German contemporary art, such as Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz, whose work opened up what a landscape, or a painting, could be. Together, these two currents, one lyrical and one expressive, continue to run through my work.

My path into painting did not begin with a brush. Early in my training, the sculptor Wilhelm Schiefer, a Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumnus, introduced me to the interplay of light and shadow and how it shapes form, depth, and spatial perception, an influence that still sits at the centre of how I paint. In the 1990s, I trained under master printer Peter Rühmkorff in Hessia, Germany, learning copper engraving, steel engraving, and lithography, alongside early experiments in soapstone carving. Between 2000 and 2014, I continued my training at the Galerie de l’Olympe and Académie Pierre Jean Chaffrey in Lyon, followed by further training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bad Homburg, where I deepened my practice in charcoal and pencil drawing.
Printmaking still shapes how I paint today, the fine, incised discipline of engraving surfaces in the way I build texture in oil, from the linear rhythm of grasses and bark to the layered, tonal depth I bring to atmosphere and sky, an echo of lithography’s build-up of tone through successive layers.

Light is at the heart of my artistic practice. Early in my training, sculptor Wilhelm Schiefer introduced me to the relationship between light, shadow, and the sense of depth they create. Since then, I have been fascinated by the way light shapes our perception of the world, revealing some details while concealing others.

Nature provides an endless source of inspiration. I am drawn to the changing qualities of light throughout the seasons, the subtle influence of weather, and the ever-shifting rhythms of the natural world. My work explores our relationship with nature and its remarkable ability to renew and transform itself over time.

I work in oil on canvas. Whenever the landscape allows, I paint outdoors, directly in front of the subject, working with the changing light rather than against it. Sketches and studies made on site are later developed into finished compositions in the studio, where I have more room to work on layering, tone, and the larger structure of a piece.