What moves me? I’m very inspired by films, particularly the films of David Lynch, Jean Jeunet, Godard, Jim Jarmusch, and Tim Burton. I think it’s the storytelling with a set of fragmented images that I’m so attracted to. This is also probably why I’m very attracted to comics, as well: Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Craig Thompson, Neil Gaiman, Nicole Georges.

Painters I love very very much are Yoshitomo Nara, Henry Darger, Seonna Hong, and Edward Gorey (who was a drawer, really). Obviously the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll and other Hans Christian Anderson and Grimm’s Brothers fairy tales have been very formative in my work and the formation of my personality, really.

Vintage fashion, and also contemporary fashion to a smaller extent serve as inspiration. I’m also a bit obsessed with music. The Cocteau Twins, X, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, The Smiths etc., etc. Many songs have been the little seed of a painting or a project.

Why “The Black Apple”? The answer is a bit convoluted, I’m afraid. About two years ago, I just got this image of a black apple into my head, and thought “how strange, how unique”. I had a feeling it was one of the most original thoughts I’d ever had! (Later, a friend found this shirt at a flea market for me with tiny black apples with red leaves printed all over it, so some pattern designer for the ‘70s must’ve had the same “original thought”.

I love apples, as objects, as tasty fruit and I love the idea of subverting an already loaded object (as far as visual art is concerned). I like to think of how lovely a tree full of red leaves and black apples hanging off of the branches would be! The image is a mystery, but at the same time invokes fairy tale connotations, biblical attachments, relates to domesticity: it goes on and on.