Let’s start in the atelier. So we are here in the middle of the atelier. How does your day start?In the morning you get up, you take a shower, and you come here. Do you know what you are going to make while you’re standing in the shower? Or is it when you come here and you start picking up things? Or do you see something hanging and you think “Okay, I will…”
No. I always leave something the day before. For instance, I know I need to glue this piece of paper now. I could do it, but it is better to leave it for tomorrow. So you don’t have to start from the cold.
Ah, the philosophy of not doing everything… Like writers do sometimes. They know what they have to do, but they stop just before finishing, so they know what to do the next day.
Yes. You are warming up. So you do not have to start from zero again. You are starting from, let’s say, ten. I think it is difficult to start from zero. Sometimes it happens, you finish the work and you finish the work the day before. But I rather prefer to finish the work the next day.
And if you say “It is finished.” What do you do? Do you sign it, for example?
No. I never sign it. I only sign things when they go out of the atelier.
So if it is hanging you can still change it. It is not finished until it is out of the atelier.
And with some drawings I like thinking that they are finished when they are framed. When they are protected from me, behind the glass.
Yes! That is what you did with the series Universe. It was also a sort of lockdown for half a year. You drew and drew, and you had more than a thousand drawings which you put into vitrines afterwards. And then you had something like “Now they are protected from me and from the outside world.”
Sort of the… there is always doubt. A kind of healthy doubt when the work is finished. You know, it is better to have this doubt until the last moment. It is healthy. To not say “This is definitely finished.” Sometimes it is very hard.
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