Where is the most beautiful view in the world?
SUITE VIEW is the portrait view through the window of a hotel suite, captured on canvas. A visual art project goes on tour through the countries of this world.
My vision comes into being in the middle of the sea, during my artistic work on one of the largest container ships in the world. Here, where the waves break under me and starry nights become pure inspiration for me. Here on the deck, surrounded by water, I continually ask myself the one question which I can no longer avoid answering:
“Are there views of endless expanses, besides at sea, which captivate me? How much can one capture expanse and from where can they be grasped?”
The person posing the question, myself, becomes the seeker, becomes the traveler, discoverer and the wonderer. I find my answers in the moment in which I enter the suite on the highest floor of a hotel and capture the view into the expanse onto a canvas. The sky is so near up here, sunk and dipped in the beauty of the setting of whichever foreign place with which I have a companionship for a time. I come to stay for 48 hours.
From now on, I am intoxicated, ensouled, fascinated and full of curiosity with every work I create. First driven, now I am driving. I am always pleasantly surprised, and this time I even surprise myself, because I don’t know what to expect, I know neither my room nor its view. I let myself be drawn in, to Orient and Occident, to north and south. This ball of earth is large. Breathing in the fragrance of a foreign land, I mix that aroma which I capture into my paints, dip my fingers in it – 10 fingers are my tools, I don’t need any other personal items. In the anonymous atmosphere of the suites it becomes clearer how much having disappears when being is so fulfilled. The term “wealth” takes on a new meaning for me during my travels.
I can’t miss anything because I have everything here, which is important to me: My view. From now on, everything is connected to this. I find colors which are not in tubes, mix my reality to fit the scene, and abandon myself, dive in, swim back up and catch the moment with all of my senses. With a throbbing heart, I discover details, which casual glances may miss. I paint what I see and what I feel, whether it is the magic of a gleaming skyline, whose skyscrapers jut high up into the air, or an endless sea of lights by night.
My suite turns into an atelier with my journey. Endlessness is what I see and it also what I wish to achieve: To sense closeness as well as distance, touching boundaries, testing them, finding new ones, pushing them higher, breaking them. Going out into the world, which grows light and dark, like the ebb and flow of life.
Every time I enter a new suite, I am one with the new surroundings and dive in with all my senses, I am home. And with that, the return to my home city gains new meaning every time. “It is magnificent to be on a ship in a wild storm, and to know that it will arrive at the harbor.” But not only quotes from Blaise Pascal are an inspiration to me: That which stirs my soul I also give back calligraphically, time and time again.
I begin in my home city of Hamburg, and the project comes full circle at the harbor with a view of the gate to the world after a long journey through all of the continents. Here is the heart of my creative flow. Here my career begins, when I came here seventeen years ago, traveling over the Elbe Bridges from Hannover, magically allured by the harbor and the river. Here, two years ago, is where my first painting in the suite view series was created. Which place of exhibition could be more fitting than Hamburg’s new emblem, the Elbphilharmonie? My return is filled with large formatted oil paintings. Faces like mosaic stones of a large whole, of the work, of the spectrum full of contrasts. My conclusion of how to create a perfect painting is: “I am touched by what I see, I touch the paints and canvas with my hands and in the end the painting touches the observer.” And so, 50 works from my journeys unite together in a composition for an entire orchestra, containing impressions and perceptions, reminding me of that unique view of the world through the window of a hotel suite.
