Hi, my name is Karl,

I was born in Auckland, New Zealand on New Year's Eve 1966, and I still live here.
I have enjoyed art since childhood, am mostly self taught, and I like to work with oils, pastels, watercolours and Photoshop.
My style varies from representational to abstract, and my influences range from Van Gogh to Wassily Kandinsky, to
Jackson Pollock and even the early Disney animated features.

One of my favourite painters is the renowned Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), an eminent teacher and
art theorist who is credited with being the first to paint modern abstract art. Kandinsky early understood how music, being
by nature an abstract art, more often reflected inner spiritual experience rather than depicted exterior images of the world.
He came to believe that expressing the inner voice was also an integral essence of being an artist, and that painting should
grow from internal necessity. In his middle period, rather than depicting recognisable forms, he used colour and shape to
express spiritual and personal feelings and experience.For my inspiration I look to meditation, philosophy, nature, music and
the arts, from which I seek the unseeable and the unexplainable.Because something falls outside the realm of rational
experience, does not mean it is any less credible. For me painting is a journey of personal discovery. My art is about
developing an awareness of what I see and feel within, and communicating the mysteries within the internal universe of the
soul. I believe in the healing power of art, both for the viewer and the artist. Through choice of colour, symbolism and
metaphor I try to convey a meditative stillness, and attempt to take the viewer out of themselves and into the painting.
Another artist I admire is the German painter Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840), who painted representational depictions
of landscapes and nature, and imbued them with a feeling of transcendental mysticism. He belonged to the German-
Romantic movement in the Arts and believed that ‘an artist should not only paint what is before him, but also what is within
him.' Born thirteen years after Friedrich’s death, the great Dutch painter -Vincent Van Gogh(1853-1890) embodied this
belief in his paintings, painting the scenes he saw before him, but imprinting them with the life and turbulence he felt within
his own being.
Quote:
'I see in the whole of nature, for instance in the trees, expression, and, so to speak, soul' Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)