How do you work?

I have always sketched and drawn wherever possible, on trains, on planes, during meetings. I always carry paper with me. And I have been keeping diaries for over thirty years now, every single day, to record details on my private life but also on what I see around me. My diaries consist of notes, drawings, video fragments, photography. The diaries help me to discover connections. They are like a script, a storyboard, and can trigger an idea, or something can fall into place. 

For instance: I see a rotating disco ball reflecting light and record this in my diary. Later, I may see the link with a poem describing how something, the spirit or an object, cannot lighten up -illuminate- without some action. Helped by my earlier diary note, I can then show ‘light’ in a simplified way, without words but with expressive visual language. 

I work at reduction. At first glance my work is graphic, at second glance the object is separated from the environment and reduced to the essential and elementary. Feeling, spontaneity and premonition are a part, but these emotions are restrained in the process. It is a complex process. My approach is very simple: all my work is a simplified version of a given. However, the creation requires a wealth of thinking material – this needs to be released, to get to the very core. I rely heavily on my sensitivity to do the right thing with the right feeling.