You say that the modern life is a great inspiration for your art. How and in what ways do you use the modern life in your creations? What are the advantages and side effects of it for the people of our time? Would you prefer living in another period of the history or are you exactly happy, here in 2008? :)

I'm fascinated by modern life, for me artwork is a way of exploring what it's like to be alive right now, and trying to make some sense of the world.

Something that I've realised about my own life is that a lot of it is based on second hand sources (internet/film/books etc.) rather than things I've actually physically experienced. I love being able to readily access information on all kinds of things from around the world, I love the fact that I can find photos of people from the 1920s now probably more easily than I could have done back then, but at the same time I think seeing so much stuff through lenses and screens leaves me feeling isolated and detached, even when I don't immediately realise it.

I can remember when I was at school being told that you should write or make artwork about things you know, which made sense but used to frustrate me, probably because I didn't have a lot of direct experience. It feels more natural for me to make my work about the internet, about photos and films and books - my first hand experience is of second hand experience.
If I had to pick another period of history, it would probably be the 1920s, to me that decade seems to have a lot of parallels with today. The idea of a society that's beautiful but teetering on the edge of collapse is something I'm obsessed with.
I think if you look at writing etc. from previous periods in history, a common theme is people believing they live at a time of great change, but I really feel right now there's so much potential for things to go either well or badly, and arguably so little chance of them continuing as they are. For me these first years of the new millennium feel so different to growing up as a teenager in the 90s - there seemed to be a feeling back then that everything would basically stay the same forever. When you look at things now like environmental change, population growth, peak oil and other resource depletion problems, the accelerating pace of technological development particularly in computers and medicine. For better or worse, it's difficult to see things staying the same.

- You are using mixed media in your beautiful and inspiring artworks. From acrylic paint to photographs, charcoal to some textures, you are combining many tools and diciplines to create your stunning style. You are a real master for creating unique compositions with big spaces which allow the works to breathe. When and how did you decide to work this way?

I used to work far too realistically (arguably I still do). I found that using different media and techniques forced me away from that, and helped me concentrate on what I was trying to say with the artwork. I've fundamentally switched the way I make artwork a lot of times over the past 10 years - I've switched from drawing with pencil, to mixed media paintings, to experimenting with photocopiers, to using photoshop and now back to mixed media paintings. I think switching approaches has really helped me, I've picked up new things from each different way of working but it also helped me focus on the content of the work. It was difficult at first going from using Photoshop to working by hand again, but I'm really enjoying physically painting at the moment. it's a learning experience and I have a lot of improving to do, but it's fun.
Compositionally I try to work on the idea of creating focus and space, I tend to be interested in how people relate to their surroundings, so it's almost trying to balance the focus of portraiture vs. creating space. I think sometimes at the moment some of my paintings are too busy, I have to work at taking out elements once the painting's starting to take shape. I try to get the different media to play off of each other and work together, to use whatever's most natural for the type of mark I'm trying to create.
A lot of the elements of my work aren't particularly original, I owe a huge debt to the artists who have gone before me. I take elements from loads of different artists, contemporary and historical, I try not to spend too much time looking at any one person's work because I either end up copying it or trying so hard to avoid copying it that it cramps my style. About a year after I graduated I decided to actually spend a couple of years not looking at other people's artwork to give myself time to focus on what I was doing. I love looking at work by photographers and film makers, I think sometimes they work harder with angles and compositions than some painters do.

- Do you think it's important for the artists to tell something about the world with their works? Should they be more sensitive and do they have a mission to make the life better by showing people the real truth? As a sensitive artist and even an activist, how do you evaluate the future of the world?

I'm not sure for artists generally, but personally I feel it's important for me to try and say something about the world through my work, or maybe rather explore how I feel about it. I'm more interested in trying to make sense of all the things that I see through painting rather than telling people what they should think. I don't even know how you'd begin to fix the world.
I think the future of the world is fascinating. There seem to be so many things that could either go very well or very badly. At either extreme, people born now could theoretically live indefinitely, or "first world" society could collapse within the next 10-20 years. For all the criticisms I have of our society, I am entirely a product of it; I'll be the first to die if the revolution finally shows up.
Either which way, I'm really interested to see what happens next.

- What do you think about the September 11? George W. Bush says; "This young century will be liberty's century" for the 21th century. Do you think it's possible with politicians like him? How do you define Mr. Bush with 3 words or 1 sentence?

I think September the 11th was a tragedy. I think sometimes even now I still find it hard to really take it in, to understand that it actually happened. Events like 9/11, the bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and the firebombing of Dresden horrify me, because I can sit here and read about them and look at all the pictures, but I'm so safe and detached from it it's almost impossible to comprehend that these things were real, and happened to real people.
As for George W Bush, I think he's been a terrible president for a country that deserves and desperately needs a good leader. I think sometimes the desire to oversimplify things leads us to focus on the leader, when really it's about the organisation as a whole. How you go about changing an entire administration I have no idea. I think it's good to see that people have reacted against it over the years, although it's taken a long time and a lot of the damage which has been done will take a long time to fix. It's frustrating sometimes how slowly things like this change, but I don't think that's any reason to stop trying.

- Music is a big part of your life. In what ways does it affect your working process and creations? Not an easy question but, which band or artist is your all-time favorite?

Heh, that's tricky. I think my all time favourite band is still probably Portishead, I saw them play live a few months ago at All Tomorrow's Parties and they were fantastic. I'm really looking forward to their new album, which I think finally comes out this month. If I had to pick one band though to listen to for, say, a whole day, it would probably be Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Music plays a big part of the creative process for me, when I'm painting and listening to music on my headphones and drinking a bit, something about it just feels perfect.

- We know that you are interested in cinema and you mostly prefer independent movies. What do you think about Hollywood style? Which directors do you find closer to yourself in terms of visual comprehension?

I love David Lynch's and Akira Kurosawa's films, I think they're fantastic. Recently I've also loved Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year in Marienbad by Alain Resnais, I find films like this really inspiring, both conceptually and visually. I should point out that they're "closer" to me only in the sense that I steal from them mercilessly.
I'm still not sure what I think of Hollywood films. it's a love/hate relationship. There's something I find fascinating about trashy, low culture. Maybe it's because with all the opportunity and wealth in the world, this is what we do with it. In some ways I can't believe how bad it is, but maybe it's as good as anything else.

- If you had a chance to go back in time and visit an artist's studio, who would you like to be with and what would you talk to him or her?

Not sure. maybe Egon Schiele? I think it would be interesting, I love his work and to me he's someone who feels very contemporary in many ways. It would be interesting to actually experience what life was like then and see how he fitted in to the time. I have no idea what we'd talk about, probably pretty girls. I don't know whether I'd tell him he was going to die soon.

- Theme of the 12th issue of Bak Magazine is "Red". What does this word mean to you? If you are asked to pick a color for David Lynch movies, would it be red, or what?

Red's a great colour. yeah, I guess red would be a good colour to describe David Lynch's films. I tend to think of colours more in terms of combinations of colours, how they fit with other colours, rather than by themselves.
To me red is a warm, vibrant colour, which is positive, but also it's the colour of violence and blood, as opposed to blue which is calm and quiet but also cold. Maybe it's all part of the same thing, if you view life as being essentially heat and activity and struggle, of which violence is a natural part, against cold and stillness and death. I think I read that in China red is a lucky colour. Let's go with red as meaning good luck.