Related Biographical Notes

At the age of  twenty-five I returned to Switzerland, after graduating from Vancouver School
of Art (now Emily Carr University) in spring 1978. To make a living through the following two years I had to take on a variety of menial jobs, in landscape gardening, building construction, factories and the like, which altogether was a good experience but did not allow for any serious pursuit of painting, but I continued doing water colors and drawing and sketching in different techniques.

Next I worked in a circus through two consecutive seasons 80/81 – fourteen hours a day non-stop through nine months each – certainly no painting there, travellers’ life, tough but very good – where during the shows I brought colour and atmosphere to the manège by directing the spotlights.

I then settled in Aarau in 1983 and found a part-time job renovating antique furniture, so I could set up a studio and finally start painting and drawing in earnest.

At first I painted in acrylics on hardboard – a group of large pictures resulted, the foundation to my later work – and did parallel to it series of smaller paper formats in gouache /oil pastel, a mixed technique which I would continue developing through the years to follow. I had a few shows around the area, even selling a bit sometimes, although this did not lead to any major public acclaim.

I got married to Rita in 1984 and a year later we had our first daughter Seraina, then in 1987 our son Mario – so I went back to a fulltime job again to let my wife and the little kids enjoy proper loving care. This time I was a bookseller in a bookstore, with of course very little time left for painting. But again I kept drawing in different techniques like charcoal, Conté, Chinese ink, monotype. 

In 1989 my wife took up work again, I found a part-time job as a supervisor in a pool hall, and for the first time I had quite a bit of daytime in the studio so I could start with oil on hardboard. In the following few years I would then paint the bulk of my existing work in this technique, but again large series in gouache/oil-pastel as well.
My first successful show in an established art gallery followed, increasing recognition with the audience and some fellow artists, then a few more shows, one of them in Zurich.

Our second daughter Corina was born in 1991, so we have been a family of five ever since. For a while I could still pursue painting on this larger scale, but lost my part-time job in the mid-nineties, and the demands to me as a father became ever more important as I felt that I owed my children a whole lot, so I had to make necessary choices. I have always been into other fields too, like photography, writing in German and English, and especially into sound. At that time I was performing my own music with a jazz-folk/acoustic-rock group named “Chief Broom” and was not going to sacrifice this. I certainly did not appreciate the pressure but went back to work anyway and gave up painting in 1996 on the height of my achievements so far, to at least keep pursuing my music. Of course I hoped this would only be temporary. I was not going to become just a hobby painter in my free time, I would rather stop painting altogether. And
I felt that my work so far – although not very ample – already stood in its own right, even if  I would I never be able to resume painting again.
But now, more than twelve years later, as all three of our lively youngsters have come of age, my situation has improved somewhat, so that I am seriously planning to paint again.
I might be lucky and get a second wind.