India, 2004

After some years of traveling and visiting clients in Asia, I lived in Bali for a number of years but finally settled in South India, building a mountaintop home on KodaiKanal in Tamil Nadu. Over several years I and my wife Fanny worked with our gardeners led by Raknesh, our estate manager in creating beautifully terraced gardens in the 10 acre property. Being 7000 feet above sea level and so receiving alot of rain, flowers and plants grow quickly and abundantly and soon the barren rock was transformed into an exotic garden with countless irresistible corners. Having worked less with the genre of landscape than any other I became greatly excited and inspired by many of the property's intimate little gardens within greater gardens. Although practical circumstances caused us to return to Europe, we never gave up our home in India and whenever we return there I get busy with my brushes or even sometimes with pens, to make drawings of which I have almost filled a very special 50 page book. It is my intention to work with landscape more in the future as I find it one of my three favourite subjects , the other two being portraits and the nude.