As a trained sculptor, my path went from colored sculpture and colored spaces and installations to the color of painting, and from there, the free floating color depth of the canvas, the painterly imaginary space, to narrative, to illustration. I looked around and saw that I had always illustrated: in stone, in wood and bark, in paper casting and ceramics, in acrylic, with ink and fineliners. On canvas, in glazes, on paper, concrete, on walls. I arrived at gouache and these wonderful Karisma crayons.

If I want to draw a whale shark, an ancient sea turtle, a sobbing actor, or a dreaming child, I try to feel what it feels like to move through the liquid blue like this, to plow through the facial expressions of other people’s emotions, or to be what you dream without knowing what that is. Empathy guides the pen, the brush, the eyes and the hand, no matter what I do. When I cover an entire wall around a sculpture with organoid forms in a free wall drawing, I have to be able to rely on my hand, like a baker, a musician, like one who throws a stray dog onto the page.

When I read a text, think about something, tell or show something, I try to listen carefully, to look closely at what I see. Until I can put it on paper the way I saw it. When I look for illustrations for this, photos that could serve as templates, I look at them until I feel or see how they want to be drawn. Or how they want to be put together to come to speak. And when it’s very still – a stillness that sometimes consists of music – and I’m very patient and forget what I want, then they draw themselves.