Ernst

About 40 years ago I decided to change my career from being a scientist and researcher at different universities to becoming an artist. As a visiting scholar at Boston University I was allowed to take courses at the art department. Over a longer period of time I visited the "Drawing Study" of the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, where I was allowed to copy original drawings of the masters (Rembrandt, Ingres, Michelangelo etc.). After about 4 years of drawing full time, I started to use oil colours. I was very much influenced by the colours of impressionists then. It was only after about 10 years of painting that I ventured into freeing myself increasingly from representational work. Colours of Matisse and Diebenkorn became my passion. With increasing experience I realized that mixing pure pigments with acrylic medium allowed me to be more flexible with the application of colour. I could use the colours impasto or smufato depending on the kinds of effects I wanted to achieve. Charcoal, inkpens and pastells helped to broaden my range of expression. In the meantime I became very familiar with these tools and I experiment with them continuously. Wether I paint purely abstract or figuratively, my main intention is to work on each part of the canvas so that they could be paintings on their own. I also want to apply colours in such a way that they "speak" to each other. One could call this approach the counterpoint technique of painting.