Based in Switzerland 

for more : anjesdellova@hotmail.com

Statement 

My artistic practice explores memory, the face, and gesture through a painting technique called frottage. This process is both instinctive and controlled. I begin with a canvas primed in white, placed over a surface with irregular textures. Using brushes and oil paint, I rub, erase, scrape, and layer the paint, allowing forms to appear. Although this gesture can seem rough or even violent, the final result often reveals a surprising softness. The canvas becomes a place where roughness and fragility coexist.

Through this technique, I try to keep my painting simple and stripped back, avoiding thick layers of paint or any sense of richness or excess,or any kind of sumptuousness. I seek a deliberate form of poverty. Frottage flattens the paint and removes volume, allowing forms to float between appearing and disappearing. The imperfections, gaps, and hollow spaces that emerge are not accidents. They are elements I actively search for and develop.

The subjects I paint are often distorted or fragmented. They reflect my experience of presence as something that can never be fully reached or understood by another person. These breaks in the figures can make the viewer feel unsettled or lost, not only because the other person seems strange, but also because this strangeness can feel strangely familiar and close.

In my paintings, frottage becomes a way of speaking through the material itself. I am not interested in creating smooth or perfect surfaces. For me, painting is not simply a finished object, but a space of tension, where textures, empty spaces, and cracks allow forms to emerge. Through their shape or what they contain, I want these forms to feel welcoming, like an invitation.