watercolor nerd

When studying at Cornell University in 2017, my room-mate was a famous Chinese watercolor artist. Night after night I kept watching him paint until I could no longer resist the urge to paint myself — and it changed my life.

The first stroke of a fully loaded brush over cold pressed paper always opens up a space of unprecedented possibility and utter powerlessness. Watercolor has taught me a fascination for wild things and a deep understanding that they fade especially when you grasp them too firmly.

This was my exile during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being confined to a small village in northern Spain when the borders closed was, like for everyone else, a punch to the gut. The total population of this pueblo is around 70 people, most of whom are on the elderly side of a Gaussian population curve. We had a local produce vendor and a pharmacy, so there was no need to leave the village for the next four months. Photography and painting are two related activities, but the latter uses even more reductive, selective, and affirmative methods, which remind me of the long nights of reading and painting.

Early morning light glistening on the washed cobblestone street of Barri Gòtic in Barcelona. Sometimes a place has a particularly strong presence that I’m trying to mix into my painting. In this case, I was grappling with the beauty of a rising morning in a new and exciting place—a place I actually didn’t want to be. I had just landed a few hours ago at the Barcelona El Prat Airport and was exploring a city which seemed exciting and colorful at first, but which would over the years reveal its split personality to me like no other place.

Each watercolor needs to be observed from a specific distance to appreciate it. Standing too close to it can have devastating effects on the artist’s strokes and contrast. In the process of painting, I will try my best to highlight only the key aspects and leave the rest of the interpretation to the observer, who will probably see much more than I can put into words.

A place I considered my kingdom, a sleepy field and a silent forest separated by a sometimes clear, sometimes muddy stream. When I came home from school nothing could stop me from throwing my schoolbag into the corner and running with my pocket knife and a small spool of yarn up and away into the forest.

I still remember very well when I first arrived in this beautiful city. Actually, it was a very dirty and cold city that I arrived in. Coming from the countryside, the move into the capital was a shock, and a shared room, lack of comfort, and social structures did not help. BOKU University became my new home; the gardens and dark corridors became my living room. This view is from the city vineyards down by the Danube river on a morning run.

One morning, on my way to an exam, I witnessed the early morning sun break through a layer of low-hanging clouds and realized that Vienna is a beautiful city because of the hearts of the people who make it. A place in which, over the last five years, I had primarily spent my time studying, working, and working out.

Berkeley Marina was my preferred running route in 2019 when I moved to the Bay Area to join a biomaterials startup and ended up happily on the other side of the bay, living in a small warehouse a colleague from work had previously used to grow weed in. My first six months in the Bay were filled with all the exciting 9-9-6 things of a young startup life such as working and sleeping.

Standing on Broadway felt like being in the center of this planet’s pulsing heart. Sleeping at a Greyhound station, I was cheated out of some money by the first person I asked for directions, but helped by the second, and I realized this place was different. Walking down Broadway became a source of unprecedented pleasure whenever I had time to spare. The warm tones used for the background architecture could indicate a nostalgic streak for long summers and times well-lived.

During the European winter, circuses used to travel south to pass the cold months in lower latitudes, many ending up going to Italy or Spain. Barcelona was always famous for its circus culture, which animated me to double down on my handstand practice.