About myself.

I do not believe that there are rules for art, any type of art, except that an artist’s work should always be the best he is capable of without considerations of acceptability, money or taste. Works of art are today the only artefacts without utilitarian end and the only ones which are not consumed within a short time. They are man’s claim for permanency and immortality.  

I was born in Austria in 1940, studied painting at the Vienna Art Academy where I graduated and at the Baltimore Institute in Maryland where I learned photography. I was lucky, I never had to earn money from painting but always had other, mostly part time but well paid jobs which provided for a comfortable living. At the age of 26 I moved to London where I lived until 2003 when we moved to Dorset. Since 2013 we spend half a year in Italy, in Lazio on Lago Bolsena. I was divorced from my first wife in 1977 and am now living with my second wife Zelda since 1978. I have 2 children - girls - and 3 grand children, also girls.  I also have three Burmese Cats.

I paint with oil paint on MDF boards or canvas, mostly large sizes (although by some modern standards not so large), with watercolour, ink, pencil or oil pastel on paper, mostly A1 or A2 formats. In the 1980s I over painted A2 sized colour photographs with oil paints and wrote children’s books.

Some of my paintings can be seen on this website, which I update regularly. My total work consists of over 1000 paintings, around 70 overpainted colour photographs, 2 children’s books and numerous photographs. Although it is nice to be free of the burdensome necessity to earn money from my art this freedom does not encourage self publication. Immortality is not achieved by living behind walls; it needs the confirmation of others. For this reason I tried my own gallery in Brick Lane for a couple of years without success and my website which has existed nearly as long as the Internet itself.

It is man that I am interested in. Man has created the world which surrounds us; he destroyed it and rebuilt it again. He has not only formed the object world outside but also himself, the way he looks and the way he sees himself. A portrait by Rembrandt, one by Rubens, or the head of a Greek statue are the same portraits of human faces but worlds apart. My paintings, if successful, should create images of today’s man, not of his everyday life where he works and consumes but of his actions and interests and thoughts, his fascination with sport and sex, his barbarity in genocide and modern wars, his violence. But for me the most fascinating subject is the human face, either as a portrait of part of a subject-painting