I was born in 1977, Januar 2. in Scheessel (a village between Bremen and Hamburg) in Germany and I have already painted a lot as a child. Even back then my favourite motives to paint were fabulous creatures and spaceships .

Perhaps this was a result of my preference for fantasy and science fiction (in the beginning mostly movies but at the age of 10 I began to read books with this kind of stories).

I allways liked the cover illustrations and sometimes they were even the main-argument to buy a book.

After years of drawing I lost motivation to do this in the last of my schooldays.

After graduating school I went to a technical collage for design in Bremen where I learned a lot about three-dimensional drawing and composing. I also started again to draw a lot in my leisure time (but only black & white drawings).

In 1998 I felt that I had to do something in colour (which I only did sometimes with coloured pencils before) and I started teaching myself to paint with acrylics. Since that period I paint almost exclusively with acrylics (sometimes when I haven´t got a lot of time I paint pictures with watercolour-pencils).

Most of that time painting was just a hobby for me but in 2003 it has become my second job. And this year I lost my main job and now I work as a freelance-artist/illustrator - some of my paintings are already published as CD-covers.

This leads us to another hobby of mine:

Music

especially all conceivable and inconceivable kinds of Metal, but also other styles.

I´ve prefered Rock music as long as I can think and that preference took me to Hard Rock in the late 80s and Heavy Metal a bit later. I also liked the cover-illustrations of some Metal bands like IRON MAIDEN, even before I knew their music (I first heard songs of them in 1990).

Many of that albums were covered with science fiction and fantasy illustrations so this was a bit similar to my preference for books of that kind. To me some covers are more than just packaging for the records/CDs, they are works of art that are sometimes as important as the music itself.

So the drawings of my youth were influenced by typical Heavy Metal motives like monsters and skulls and also dragons and warriors armed with swords. I also drew some landscapes that looked like what I imagined landscapes could look like somewhere in outer space. My motivation to only paint typical "Metal pictures" has gone, I want to try everything that comes into my mind.

For whom it may concern: a list of my favourite albums

Nature...

...is and has allways been a big inspiration for my work. No man could imagine more bizarre and interesting shapes than those we can see in nature. And it also is allways a pleasure for me to be out in the open countryside and to look at landscapes with mountains and woods.

My friends and I often make mountainbike-tours in mountain landscapes (mostly in the "Harz" because this is not so far away from here).

If you have realised the beauty of nature you recognize how important it is to keep and protect this fragile system (but not only for the beauty. We all should face the fact that we can´t exploit our environment without doing harm to ourselfs).

My opinion concerning that and other things I often think of, has influenced a lot of my paintings (especially those that can be seen in "surreal & symbolic pictures" but not all of them have a message). Sometimes I just paint for the joy of it and without giving the paintings a higher reason.

But I don´t want to be fixed to some genre, I will allways paint different things (but they will allways come from my imagination).

Influences

A big source of inspiration for my paintings are recent artists that do/did CD/LP-cover-illustrations like Roger Dean, Dan Seagrave, Rodney Matthews, Michael Whelan, Bruce Pennigton, Bob Eggleton and Derek Riggs but also well known old masters like Salvador Dalí and M. C. Escher.

I allways try to devellop my own ideas (which isn´t simple nowadays) and to learn more and getting better in what I do. So even I can´t say (and am eager to know) where my "artistic journey" will take me...

"to be or not to be..." composing/photomanipulation (made out of three single photos taken by myself) 2006 - 2009