What is your relationship to the tradition of painting?

Well, there are two ways for me to answer that. First of all, I am always looking for nutrition for my paintings. However, I hardly ever get the material from other paintings. In fact, I am not out after pleasure when looking at paintings. I read them rather superficially, finding out how they are done, not technically, but how things are moved on the canvas. I get my stuff from almost everything but art, simply from things that surround me, which catch my eye or imagination.

The way I work is like a soup man. I constantly have this hotpot boiling and I throw all kinds of material into it, you know, personal experiences and things that interest me, for example, a record sleeve or the title of an album. I look for different patterns of working, and am constantly trying out new mixes and ways of combining things. Basically, what I try to do, for example, is to paint how a train goes into a tunnel. It is as simple as that.

The second way to answer this is to refer to artists or things that have inspired me. Here I first have to say that I believe we are all victims of our childhood. Growing up in the 1970s I got to know all those images. Then later on, of course, I hated them. But then again, all of a sudden, I developed this extremely sentimental attitude towards them. Currently I am trying to get rid of these images. I have promised myself that I will never again use an image of women demonstrating with their breasts bare.

But to get to the point, I find Marcel Broodthaers quite wonderful. I really enjoy his weird kind of humor. It is perhaps because I am so naive, but some photos really can pull my pants down. And if we think about Pop art, I like the looser kind of stuff, nerdy Pop art, like Sigmar Polke, not the real stuff. I really like Polke, because at the time they were done, they seemed like mistakes, but now they still have a freshness that most Pop art has lost.

But if you really want to know what blows my mind, it is the stuff I saw on TV recently. It was a kind of nature program about shrimps that live in these almost closed shells underwater. Ways of life that have been developing over the last 30,000 years, and in comparison with that, the history of art is just a silly fart. But these shrimps are amazing, with all kinds of worms trying to get into their secret shells. It is like a real underwater society.

The possibilities of painting?

Painting is a zombie medium. As a painter you are a little bit like a guy showing up in a tiger suit at a techno party. So your dress code is outdated, but you might still have the best moves on the dance floor.

Personally speaking, painting is a language through which I can get a lot of experience both in and out. But to tell you the truth, it is a complicated medium, it is and remains a puzzle to me. It is not a necessary medium anymore, but somehow so many people still keep on painting. Then again, it suits me and I like the flatness of a surface. I desperately need that flatness to tell my stories, because otherwise they are too weird and unfocused.

What kinds of stories do you mean?

For me, at least, the things I really like and enjoy are not necessarily things I understand. Thus, my stories are not clear-cut, but quite strange, even if they can be pretty straightforward. One good example is a painting I just finished. It shows a woman sitting in a forest at night. There are birds flying around. It started with the desire to paint birds in the night. In the finished result they look like bats, which, I guess, is both the failure and the thrill of this painting.

You use two kinds of working strategies. One is a classical way of placing paintings on a wall, and another is making a collage and an installation. Can you say something about this combination?

For me there is no difference. It is just a matter of working structure. In both cases, the focus is on the material. As with the suit-case model, in which I travel with most of the material with me, it is about working in layers, adding stuff, and then pulling things off and erasing them. And this is the same whether I work alone or with a group of students. It is the basic painting experience. The funny thing is that I do not consider myself to be too good with the brush, but the more I make paintings, the better I get at finding those important detours and sidetracks within the painting.

What do you read?

Lately I have been through a lot of books about tea, especially green tea. Then I began again on one of my favourite novels, Knut Hamsun's Pan, which I have already read five times.

The question of time in painting?

Well, contrary to what one might believe, the more skilled I have become in painting, the more time it takes to do them. In the actual act of painting, the workload is OK, but it takes a lot of thinking and pondering before I start. And a lot of sleeping in the studio. Making paintings has become more complicated, because I am now more sure of myself, and I am more ready to explore possibilities, to take risks and find those sidetracks.

The role of the artist?

I don't know. But I can tell you that as a painter who simply had fun making paintings, I did feel bad for a long time. I really did envy artists who dealt directly with social issues. Then later on when I saw more of these works, I figured that they are actually the real painters. I became disappointed. Quite often these good citizens use social issues as if they were paint and brush, and organize them into big paintings. But to be serious, I think the role of an artist is to make people's lives a little more complicated.

Do you think you have succeeded?

No. Anyhow, I don't think I am the future of art. I consider myself like somebody who sings ballads, those stupid songs about being in love in the woods.

Autobiographical elements in your works?

I would prefer there to be less of them, but it is always a mirror situation. I never take or use images straight from my own life. I collect, use and abuse them from the world outside my personality. Honestly speaking, my starting points are embarrassingly private, but I am a master of cheap lies. I can easily turn failed love into falling objects, like in my painting called Downhill.