“I take the branches that I collect (waste material) into the studio and paint on their surface. I originally started collecting them for myself so that I could have a piece of the forest at home and to make backdrops for the paintings I was photographing, which allowed me to directly trace their specific features to more faithfully transfer them to the canvas. However, I was also looking for a way to give them another purpose. I have one project in the works, a long-term one, which I started recently: returning wood to the forest. Wood from the city, the wood of the deciduous tree to the coniferous forest, and vice versa. The motif of a hanging branch, a trunk without a crown and roots, on a thin cord, repeatedly appears in my work, symbolizing instability and uncertainty, creating tension in the painting, and at the same time calming with its stillness. It is meant to reflect a kind of anxiety of our generation in a precarious society, where we often feel as if our feet are not steady on the ground. I wanted to step out of the canvases, out of the oil paintings, and hang that dominant branch right into the forest. The project consists of assigning precise GPS coordinates to each branch, which people can use to find them. I place the branches off the hiking trails so that they can go deep into the woods in search of a precise destination. So that they can see the inside, too. It’s also a game to get people outside. Then there’s the other side of the coin, I go back and check and document the condition of the installation, some have disappeared, parts of the forest have disappeared and some have mushrooms growing on them. Nature has embraced them. I chose the sites first that were in my district, as I started the implementation during the first lockdown. Then I started placing them in places where my work took me through exhibitions and artist residencies. My intention is to draw attention to the fact that even “dead” wood has its rightful place in the forest ecosystem through the visual distinction of the branch. The branches are painted with oil paints and fixed with natural materials, so I am also counting on the fact that after some time they will fall to the ground and become part of the forest. Whereby a piece of wood painted by me becomes part of the forest.”