Artist Statement

My paintings explore the emotional resonance and structural rhythm of landscape-spaces remembered, observed, and imagined. Rather than focusing on conventionally striking motifs, I am drawn to the incidental, the banal, and the ubiquitous: forest edges, fields, suburban transitions. These overlooked fragments of nature become stages for a quiet visual tension between presence and absence.

Working at the intersection of tradition and technology, I combine plein air studies, digital sketches, and printed images with oil, acrylic, and pastel.

By layering these media, I create hybrid works that merge gesture and geometry, spontaneity and reflection. My process often begins in Procreate or with on-site sketches and culminates in the studio, where digital impressions or nature-based observations are reinterpreted by hand-bringing the bodily act of painting back into the work.

l am increasingly interested in integrating figures, architecture, and narrative elements into my landscapes. In recent paintings, I have juxtaposed different styles-realistic, abstracted, and diagrammatic-within the same canvas. This friction between visual languages becomes a field of experimentation: Can a painting remain unified while embracing multiplicity? Can disjointed parts form a harmonious whole?

My aim is not representation, but evocation. The landscapes I paint are emotional topographies, layered with memory, sensation, and subtle contradiction. If successful, they do not illustrate nature-they translate how it feels to exist within it.

Stefan Ullrich