In Conversation with Marie Claire db

On beauty, the female figure, and what remains unseen.

What would you like someone to feel when looking at one of your paintings?

I would love for them to find it impossible to look away. To feel a whirlwind of emotions so intense that they can’t quite recognise them or put them into words. I want the painting to awaken something in their soul that they didn’t even know was there.

Why the female figure?

To me, the female figure is, at least in part, a metaphor for the soul. Not necessarily a woman’s soul, but something that belongs to all of us.

Through her body, her story, what she reveals and what she keeps hidden, I try to express fragility, strength, and that ability to endure which we often only discover when life really puts us to the test.

What role does beauty play in your paintings?

Beauty is how I draw the viewer in. In a way, it’s something I’ve done in my own life too, in the way I relate to people.

Beauty is what we notice first, but behind it there can be an infinitely more complex emotional world.

That’s what I would love to happen with my paintings. For someone to be drawn to them because of their beauty, and then slowly discover an entire world opening up beneath the surface.

What made you start painting?

I started painting after going through some very difficult experiences in my personal life.

I had no formal art training, and I didn’t even know whether I could. And yet I felt this need to do it, almost without being able to explain why.

There was something inside me looking for a way to express itself, and instinctively, I chose painting.

How did you move from abstraction to the female figure?

In the beginning, I worked mainly with colour. Then came geometry, perhaps because I felt the need to bring some order and structure into my compositions. But something was still missing.

I needed to be the first person to feel captivated by my own paintings. I wanted a painting to speak to me, to stir something inside me.

The female figure appeared gradually, almost forcing her way in. I like to think she elbowed her way past the geometry and abstraction to claim her own space. At some point, she had taken over the composition.

I remember the sense of relief I felt when that happened. Finally, I could look at one of my paintings and feel that it had something to tell me.

When you begin a painting, do you already know what you want to say?

No. The figure is in charge. Completely.

I close my eyes and I see her in my imagination. I don’t start with a particular message that I want to illustrate. She’s the one who appears, who makes herself known, and everything begins from there.

How does your creative process unfold?

Between the image that first appears in my mind and the one that eventually becomes the finished painting, there’s a long, often difficult process. It’s anything but immediate.

I work on the composition, change it, question it over and over again, until I finally arrive at an image that feels exactly right.

Only then do I begin to paint.

On canvas, I try to stay as faithful as possible to that vision. But when it comes to the physical qualities of the paint, I allow myself to be more instinctive.

Sometimes a surface I had imagined perfectly smooth becomes textured, simply because, as I’m painting, I feel it needs something more.

How much of your personal life finds its way into your paintings?

A great deal, although never in a literal way.

From the outside, my life might seem peaceful, settled, almost untouched by difficulty. But I’ve been through experiences that have tested me deeply.

I’ve known fear, fragility, moments when everything felt uncertain. But I’ve also discovered an immense strength within myself, one I never imagined I had.

And through all of it, there has always been so much beauty.

I think something similar happens with the women I paint. We only see a part of them. We don’t know what they’ve been through or what they carry inside.

And perhaps that’s what interests me most.