Everything I create fundamentally stems from my own ego, I constantly examine and process my own self, and in this case I contrast my own behavior and feelings with those of others. From these analyses, I plan to create large-scale paintings, expressing the oppressive weight of one’s own, guarded, fragile self. The topic is specifically about the ego, mostly about the damaged ego, i.e. about the internal and external battles that take place between one’s own ego and the egos of others, even subconsciously. Aggressiveness, anxiety, suppression, attack, argument... Underneath all this, there is fear, lack of self-confidence, insecurity, the desire for approval. The often heavy, stalky figures are compositionally forced into the entirety of the canvases, which visually expresses the extreme discomfort suffered by man as he tries to adapt to the “boxes” imposed on him by society, which he perceives as the general measure of success. During the creative process of the EGO series, I was immersed in exploratroy analysis every day, thinking, reading, and researching the characteristics of the ego. I often examined my own changing behaviors, moods, and feelings to draw inspiration and direction for this very personal exploratory process. I constantly wrote notes to myself, took daily diary-like audio recordings of my thoughts and feelings, so that I could actively follow and keep my progress on a straight path in both thematic and technical directions. In the meantime, I found significant inherent parallels between the various external manifestations of the ego and the seven cardinal sins, which are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. These seven deadly sins gave me a useful direction as a theme on which to base the grouping of the works that appear in the series of artworks, without specifically talking about sins, but mostly I wanted to bring to the surface the much deeper personal emotional and psychological injuries, traumas that are the original source of these so-called sins - portraying what causes a person to behave badly towards others and oneself (for example - guilt, lack of self-confidence, fear, pain, isolation, sorrow, narcissism...).
