What is your art background, how and when did you start painting?

I’ve been studying for five years, and during my bachelor’s I felt a bit lost and I think I mostly tried to do the kind of art that people around me were doing and the kind of art that the professors were talking about. Between my bachelor and master I took a year off, and spent some time in Italy and Denmark. I was looking a lot at painting which reminded me that painting always had been a genuine interest for me, and that is when I realized that I wanted to pursue painting. I think I always wanted to be a painter, but I think I was too afraid to try. I’m not sure why. I had been producing images for a long time through my job as a tattooer (see https://www.instagram.com/bitchinkworldwide/), so the step towards painting was actually quite natural once I took it. My tattoo practice has given me a lot of time to think about what working with images means to me, and how I want to use them. Therefore adapting into painting felt like a natural move, it feels like I have been developing my practice for a long time. Throughout my master I solely pursued painting.

The devil seems to be a very dominant figure in your works, how come?

A lot of my work revolves around the idea of good versus bad, and I usually use traditional or metaphorical characters like devils, clowns or cowboys to portray this. To me there is something special in the obviousness of these characters, I really like the fact that they represent something that most people can recognize. They carry a heavy history which makes them very useful if you want to say something. I paint situations where these characters play a part of a story.

I’d like to ask how you see yourself connected to your paintings. Is it autobiography, fiction/imagination or does your self representation have other psychological meaning?

Most of my work is directly connected to personal feelings and experiences, and I use characters that I relate to in my paintings. I wish I was a cowboy, I feel like a clown.