I started making Museum Drawings during my study year in Vienna in 1989-90, observing the way light falls over sculptural form. I also drew from paintings, studying Netherlandish drapery.

       By the time I arrived in Munich, I was interested in the way different cultures stylize the human form, idealizing it until they become hieratic. These studies carried on during my Paris years (1996 - 2009), where I drew statuary at the Louvre. Finally, when I returned to Vienna in 2013, I carried on from where I started, passing many pleasant hours at the Kunsthistorisches Museum with my students, sketching the statuary. 

MY STUDY YEAR IN VIENNA

       In 1989, I arrived in Vienna with hopes of studying painting at die Akademie der Bildende Künste. In my portfolio for the entrance exams were all the works I'd made up to that point (see EARLY WORKS).

       I attended classes at the academy as a Gasthörer (guest student), but I learned more on my own by making Museum Sketches and Figure Drawings. I also discovered the works of Ernst Fuchs and The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.

       For the first time, I started to created Visionary works of art.

       The Marriage of Simon and Helena is a wedding portrait I made for me and my girlfriend at the time, based on the Gnostic myth of Simon Magus and his consort Helena. In the drawing, our union is blessed by Tiresias, the blind poet who lived as a woman for seven years. The candle-lit ceremony takes place in the baptismal Bridal Bath.

       Next is the unfinished In the Judgement Hall of Osiris-Christ. This was the first time I'd combined myths from different cultures. The Egyptians had the same vision of the Afterlife as Christianity ~ as a time of judgement, except the scales tended by the archangel Michael / Anubis do not weigh good against evil, but one's heart against Ma'at, the feather of Truth.

       While living in Malta, I transferred this design onto a large wooden panel and started painting it, but I had to leave it behind when I moved to Munich. 

       The last two drawings of Christ on the Wheel and The Madonna Before the Broken Wheel were given to me in a dream, and I sketched them the next morning. I eventually made two paintings of them called Christus Mysticus and Madonna Mystica while working in Ernst Fuchs studio in Monaco.