WOODEN HORSE: A SELF PORTRAIT
My Words
I paint to reach places that words refuse to go. My landscapes are not maps of the external world—they are inner geographies, shaped by memory, silence, and longing. Water, earth, sky—these elements recur, but not as nature. They are thresholds, metaphors, fragments of inner weather. Each layer of Conté, oil, or charcoal becomes a conversation between what is seen and what is felt.
The surface is my co-conspirator. Sometimes I scrape, sometimes I bury, sometimes I let the grain of the canvas speak for itself. The process is never still—it’s an act of resistance and surrender. I work at the edge where reality starts to slip, where familiar forms begin to dissolve into something dreamlike. My question is always the same: how far can I push the real into the surreal—without letting either disappear?
Over the years, certain figures have followed me from one canvas to another—a wooden horse, a rooted boat, a giant wheel, burnt darts, broken wings, birds, shadows. They are not symbols, nor metaphors. They are protagonists—emotional anchors that carry my internal weight. The wooden horse, especially, has become my constant presence: silent, weathered, resilient. Sometimes it stands still in the middle of chaos; sometimes it seems trapped or waiting. It is me, and not me. A witness to endurance, fatigue, and quiet strength.
I don’t always begin with a story. Often, the story finds me while I’m painting. The image reveals itself through rhythm, accident, or persistence. But there are moments when I return to known images—to sculptures, mythic figures, fragments from art history—not to quote them, but to disturb them. I fracture and recontextualize them, altering their meaning and rewriting their place. These borrowed forms are not tributes—they are interruptions. Some images stay lodged in my mind, demanding to be re-spoken in my own tongue. The wooden horse, for me, is eternal—it walks through time, carrying the burden of every story I never knew how to speak.
Wooden Horse: A Self Portrait took three years of unrelenting dialogue—with canvas, with self, with silence. Some days were luminous; others, unbearable. I have stared at blank canvases in fear, and at finished ones in quiet relief. I lived with them. Let them question me, accuse me, forgive me. Slowly, they began to mirror not my likeness—but my truth.
This series is not about arrival—it is about endurance.
About what stays when language fails.
About what it means to keep painting when the only thing left to paint… is yourself.
My Words
I paint to reach places that words refuse to go. My landscapes are not maps of the external world—they are inner geographies, shaped by memory, silence, and longing. Water, earth, sky—these elements recur, but not as nature. They are thresholds, metaphors, fragments of inner weather. Each layer of Conté, oil, or charcoal becomes a conversation between what is seen and what is felt.
The surface is my co-conspirator. Sometimes I scrape, sometimes I bury, sometimes I let the grain of the canvas speak for itself. The process is never still—it’s an act of resistance and surrender. I work at the edge where reality starts to slip, where familiar forms begin to dissolve into something dreamlike. My question is always the same: how far can I push the real into the surreal—without letting either disappear?
Over the years, certain figures have followed me from one canvas to another—a wooden horse, a rooted boat, a giant wheel, burnt darts, broken wings, birds, shadows. They are not symbols, nor metaphors. They are protagonists—emotional anchors that carry my internal weight. The wooden horse, especially, has become my constant presence: silent, weathered, resilient. Sometimes it stands still in the middle of chaos; sometimes it seems trapped or waiting. It is me, and not me. A witness to endurance, fatigue, and quiet strength.
I don’t always begin with a story. Often, the story finds me while I’m painting. The image reveals itself through rhythm, accident, or persistence. But there are moments when I return to known images—to sculptures, mythic figures, fragments from art history—not to quote them, but to disturb them. I fracture and recontextualize them, altering their meaning and rewriting their place. These borrowed forms are not tributes—they are interruptions. Some images stay lodged in my mind, demanding to be re-spoken in my own tongue. The wooden horse, for me, is eternal—it walks through time, carrying the burden of every story I never knew how to speak.
Wooden Horse: A Self Portrait took three years of unrelenting dialogue—with canvas, with self, with silence. Some days were luminous; others, unbearable. I have stared at blank canvases in fear, and at finished ones in quiet relief. I lived with them. Let them question me, accuse me, forgive me. Slowly, they began to mirror not my likeness—but my truth.
This series is not about arrival—it is about endurance.
About what stays when language fails.
About what it means to keep painting when the only thing left to paint… is yourself.
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