What is a day of working like in your studio?  Do you have any rituals that help you get motivated or in “the zone”?

I paint at home. I don’t have a studio and I believe it’s taken extra time from me to travel somewhere and my time for art is limited at the moment so I do cherish it. I actually never liked studios, so I need to be at home to do my artwork. I don’t like to pretend I am this posh artist who likes to get out of the house just to be by myself. I don’t have any rituals but I always start painting at around 5 am, that is my time. Maybe for some people it’s a bit extreme but for me it’s happiness.

I find your art to be very unique and interesting. Tell us about your artwork style, subject matter, medium etc.

I choose acrylic as medium in my artwork. Part of it is because I do paint at home. Acrylic doesn’t have a specific odour and it’s drying quickly and I don’t need to wait forever till the paint is dry. When I was in art school, we had to start painting with watercolours, then about the age of 14 I think we had to use oil colours, and at age of 18 You could actually have a choice in which medium You will do Your paintings. I choose acrylic and I love it. There are so many different bright colours and modeling pastes and other interesting things you can do. I think I have my own style and it’s coming from traveling the world and living in different countries and thinking about life and what actually matters in life. In the best scenario I would love to do my art full time, but it is not an easy profession and we all have to pay bills. I do work full time as well and on my days off I always do painting. And because of it, I believe I have to paint what I want. Not what someone will want to expect from me. I am in art life like a little rebel. When I finally have my art time, I do whatever inspires me in that moment. City, landscape, animals, funny stuff or women falling in love. I can be anything I want to be and I believe that is a dream for every artist. And I believe good artists have to be versatile. Sometimes if something really bothers me in life, it does end up on my canvas. For example, when the UK left Europe I decided Ihad to do painting about it, at that point it really was hurting me to bits but I know I couldn’t change anything about it, I could only tell my side of story. I am a bit sarcastic sometimes and, in this painting “Disaster, Fantastic”, it did come across exactly like that. Of course, there is nothing really sad or very bad in a painting, it’s just my way of telling this story… life will be difficult for some time in the UK, I think. I was doing that painting for about 2 years as I was waiting for the actual exit from the EU and then Covidstarted and I even put some characters with masks in it. That was a painting with quite a bit of story to tell. But honestly all mypaintings have a story.

Could you walk us through your process? How much planning do you do before you jump into a painting? If you do, what are you trying to solve at each stage of it?

As I was studying in art school, I very well know how good it is to have planning and composition etc, but after I finished Art Academy my approach starting and finishing painting changed as well. It is all in my head. Probably because I think about artwork a lot and then ideas just come to my mind. I practically know already at the starting point how it will look when I finish and what message I will give to viewers. Of course, composition is in my skin already ha ha ha, but it is just because of art school and that was my favourite subject at school. Composition, it is when You do artwork with a story. I probably have 4 stages of painting. The first is ideas, the second is drawing on canvas, then in the third stage comes colours and the last one is finishing details. Most of the time it is straight forward. There are times where something might not be as I dreamed but every artist has times like this. I believe artists can’t be like factories, everyone has to have chill time and recharge, otherwise nothing good will come out of it.

What role does humor (or another emotion) play in your artwork, if any?

Humor plays a significant role in my art. I love giving my paintings quirky titles, like ‘Get Lost!’ or ‘#thelocals,’ which adds a playful layer to the visuals. My series, The Famous World Travelling Giraffe Josephine, features whimsical scenes like cats and mice getting along or even a cat proposing to a mouse! It’s fun and lighthearted, and I think adding humor helps people connect even more with the stories in my paintings.