How long have you been creating?

I've been creating since I can remember myself, one way or another. My school notebooks as a child where full of little drawings and sketches, many times created with the aid of rulers, a degree scale and a protractor. When I got a Commodore 64 computer as a gift for my 12th birthday back at the beginning of the 80's, it was natural for me to try and create something with it. I played around with the Logo programing language and managed to create my very first digital artworks. Those are regrettably lost in the sea of time. My programming days where soon over though. While trying to find out the workings of my computer I managed to accidently write a virus that completely destroyed it. I haven't touched any programing languages after that until I found out about HTML in the mid 90's.

What is your media of choice?

My media of choice is the computerized environment of digital art. Inside that environment I move in three dimensions, changing this and adding that, creating new worlds that otherwise can only exist inside my mind.

What are you motivations for creating?

I create out of pain. Creation for me is a great transformer of pain. When I create, I leave an impression of my pain on the digital canvas, transforming it into something that is fun and happy. By creating, I transform my pain into laughter.

What other artists or movements inform your work?

When I was 10, I was asked by my grandmother what I wanted for my birthday. My answer was an M.C. Escher book. From a very young age I was interested in the mysterious, in the strange and beautiful. I was drawn to the surrealist image that is dream like but strangely realistic at the same time. Dali and Magritte have been a tremendous influence on me. The greatest artist though, and the one that teaches me the most is my own mind, especially those desolate parts that are closed my scrutiny.

What do you find visually stimulating right now?

The net is an endless source of visual delicatessen for me. It has been creating a new visual language for the last couple of years, and it's changing the world around as in more ways than we realize.

What's the last book you read?

The last book I read was "Renderosity - Digital Art for the 21st Century" - a collection of some of the best digital artists from the Renderosity website, edited by John Grant and Audre Vysniaaskas. This book is a real eye opener about this unique art form, showing a variety of styles, themes, methods and visions.

Do you feel that living in the Middle East has had an affect on your art and music either consciously or unconsciously?

What influenced my art and my music more than anything wasn't my physical place but personal tragedy. I lost both my parents at a very young age and was forced into developing myself without the aid of guiding hands. This gave me a unique perspective on life and on what I create. Music, and later art helped me survive and gave me something to hang on to, so for me art is a form of survival.

What would you like your fellow EBSQ artists and our collectors to know about you and/or your work?

Let's just say I'm a gifted amateur that one day would become an artist. It's not necessarily the truth, but it's a way to keep developing ;-)