Notes
The pictures shown in most galleries are a small selection of my works. I am not using this site to sell my art, and many of the pieces shown here are no longer available for purchase.
The First Hedgehog series
These works (for the most part acrylic or oil on canvas) are illustrations of a tale I created for my daughter about 30 years ago and that lives on until today. It is about the trials and adventures of a mythical figure, called the "first hedgehog" (depicted as a rodent like creature with only 1 single quill springing from his back). It lives in a future world where we humans are long extinct, though there are still ruins, relics and memories of our existence. By that time, the earth's atmosphere has thinned so much the sky stays black even during day-time, and light is like on moon. The First Hedgehog is a Pauline figure, trying to teach the creatures of that time the lessons we, the humans, should have learned. - - - Instructions for Use: Activate the story of an individual picture by studying what it depicts and hints to. Then let your own imagination tell the story. The title of the picture may be helpful, but is in no way binding. - - - I should mention that I am a very happy guy, optimistic and enjoying life, though admittedly - like many of us - a bit pessimistic about the long-term fate of our species. :-)
The Fairy Tale series
These large paintings on canvas and numerous additional sketches and refined drawings (not shown on this website) have a very peculiar target audience: Our granddaughter.
In these images I include a lot of personal memories and stories to tell her when she will have reached the right age. These paintings also include many of my own childhood memories and heroes (from books, movies, comics etc.), little portraits of actual people (close friends), of our current and past pets, and of collected things we have sitting in the house (little models, a mask etc.).
The paintings represent episodes in a growing series of self-invented fairy tales, in which an young teenage girl and a Goggo girl of corresponding age travel to strange places in the Goggos' world, both on earth and other planets, accompanied by friends (including some other Goggos, a spider, a snake and two marabou-headed elves). Each episode presents a specific form/theme of fight of good against evil (symbolically represented by borrowing from Christian imagery, i.e., by bringing depictions of saints, angels, demons and even god into the picture).
The Goggos are a very small species (about the size of a soft drink can). They often visit but are are rarely seen in our human world. The human teenage girl, however, has been invited into the Goggo world, for which she had to be (reversibly) shrunk to size.
For the paintings, I follow several principles of icon painting: The size of a figure is adjusted to its role in the painting, very lax handling of perspective, avoidance of cast shadows, and a stiff overall composition.
In addition to characters from comics and movies, I like to cite famous works of art (sculptures and paintings).
Pennsylvania historic sites
When we moved to eastern Pennsylvania in the year 2000, I became inspired by a local type of art that depicted its beautiful landscape, farms, barns etc. in a realist style. As an immigrant myself, as part of my settling-in and familiarization with American history and past immigration, I started to immerse myself in this type of art. I was less interested in the beauty of the land but explored the traces and structures former generations left, having them stand for the people of the past and their efforts to live. I used an earnest, subdued style to show the soul and dignity of what I found.
Devotional/religious works
It turned out that my drawing style allows me to create impactful works of Christian religious content. I make such drawings as illustrations for books, magazines and other print media, and for electronic media. They have been used by publishers, churches/religious organizations and individuals in many countries.
Recently, I decided to try myself on some icon-ish pictures. I do not want to call them icons because they are somewhat different. I call them "Christian story-pictures". While I use icon-typical stiff composition, decorative color fields, distorted perspective, simplified figures, and while I size elements based on their importance and avoid cast shadows, I take a lot of stylistic liberty and, e.g., import features of medieval illuminations, comic book art or expressive sketching. Since I re-interpret motifs and do not simply copy existing icons, I must take precautions to prevent they become shallow fantasy variants or introduce improper symbolism, but ensure they remain theologically correct and stay in tradition. Hence, many hours of research and reading go in the planning of each of these pieces - a major part of the fun of doing these pieces.
TECHNICAL ASPECTS
Drawings - technique and materials
In most cases, I use ink (India/sumi ink or other permanent inks) and either a steel quill (e.g., via fountain pen), reed pen (often a very worn one) or brushes. More rarely, I use graphite, applied with pencil or brushes. For some drawings I use lightfast colored pencils. The papers I use include so-called rice paper and other archival-quality papers - either left native or distressed and toned using acrylic paint or inks. Occasionally I draw on prepared wood board (clay board or gesso board); this also permits scratching to generate white lines.
On all drawings I may use acrylic paint or even gold leaf for highlights or other effects.
Red circles/marks
In case of a drawing, the red circle may seem to suggest it represents an Asian-style sumi-e piece. While some of the drawings with a red circle do constitute sumi-e drawings as defined by the technique used (and, therefore, labeled by me as such), and while some of them even have the visual appeal of sumi-e drawings, they should not be viewed as Asian-style sumi-e drawings. They simply do not stand in that artistic tradition. They are loose, expressive and sometimes bold drawings that I see anchored in the German post-WWII drawing tradition I grew up in. The reason for the red mark is that, if carefully positioned, it adds to the composition/balance of black and white art. For the same reason, even some of my black and white paintings on canvas have such a mark (usually more faint).
The ground of my black and white paintings on canvas
Large-format, monochrome black or grey line work on white canvas can be very unappealing, visually. A well-done textured ground can, however, move such pieces to a different dimension, making them magnetic. I create such backgrounds by working sand in the clear acrylic medium I use to prime the canvas, and then apply irregular white and grey washes, opaque and transparent.