Painting to me is a game with light, shadows and colours, playing with our perception, which is just a tiny, ideosyncratic window to the real world. Painting to me is playing with emotions and ratio, which belong together - although sometimes disparate.

As a consequence there are many different role models and approaches influencing my kind of painting:
The renaissance painters to me represent a high technical quality, which I aim to adopt in my further development as a painter. I admire the work of Caravaggio, as he has been a real genius of light and shadow. For the same reason I adore the famous impressionistic painters, who understood colour as a carrier of light and managed to represent a moment´s impression and atmosphere via light and colours. In addition, another painter, usually classified as romantic, who painted impressionistic before impressionism, has tremendous influence on my own work: William Turner. Another influential painter to be mentioned here is Claude Monet. Like those impressionists I do not use plain black colour in my paintings. 
 
The expressionists on the other hand attract me through their colourful universe and their freedom to handle colour and shape in their paintings.
The surrealists and phantastic realists are another source of inspiration, as they use classical techniques, but at the same time distract our usual way of looking at things and through their reference to the inner, unconscious world.
 
As a picture is only able to denote itself, I  paint in a symbolic way. The alert observer of my paintings will be able to identify a additional mental pictures behind what can easily be identified, but nobody is obliged to do so.

My development as an artist will proceed taking into account all these influences.