time with the canvas and seeing paint, material and external influences such as nature and weather as partners in the creation of a painting, have manifested themselves in me during years of making. ST: Ottenstein? Why is this work called Ottenstein? DR: Ottenstein is the name of a large lake as well as the Lower Austrian area surrounding it. I had been toying with the idea of turning a canvas into a raft and sail for a long time, but kept postponing it. When in 2022 I was ready to give it a go, Ottenstein sprang to mind instantly. Ottenstein is a place that is actually very dear to me. Already as a child I used to go fishing there with my father every summer. We rented a small wooden fishing boat and stayed on the water from very early in the morning, sometimes even before sunrise until late into the night to fish and be in nature. The day I set out for the Ottenstein project was rainy and very windy in the beginning, but soon calmed down while I hiked through meadows and forests by the lake for hours, dragging two canvasses behind me like a farmer would his harrow, very close to nature, that imprinted itself on the canvases. Later I transformed the two canvases into a raft, gliding over the water steered by the wind. I expected I would be on the water only for a few minutes, but the raft kept dancing on the water for hours. Night fell and it was pitch-dark, only the raft’s canvases were glowing. The light the photoluminescent paint I had used to prime the canvases emitted, attracted fish and I could feel them touching the raft’s underside. By attaching the sail, the second canvas, to the other canvas, I had ruled out having any control over the direction the wind might make the raft take. I was a tourist and a passenger in my own project. Back on the shore, the two canvases’ transformation made further progress: from a raft into a tent providing a place to sleep. ST: In Ottenstein you don‘t paint a landscape but have the landscape ‘paint’ itself, in your Flower Paintings you don‘t paint flowers but make the flowers paint. Is this inversion a way for you to get to the essence? DR: Using a motif not only as such but (also) as a painting tool is a very direct way of depiction - the motif ‘paints itself ‘ and I am responsible for the path we take. So, who is the author? I would call it a co-operation between me and the landscape or me and the bouquet of flowers in relation to the respective external situation that has an impact on the process or on our common path. The traces on the canvas, caused by the motif, the landscape, the bouquet of flowers itself painting the motif, the movement, any changes of direction and the path are directed by me or circumstances during the act of making. For me, there is something very primeval about it, which I find refreshing because it brings a certain lightness contrasting the ‘serious‘ references every painterly gesture carries. ST: How do you choose your flowers for the Flower Paintings? DR: It depends on the time of year and where I am, when I do Flower Paintings. The flowers in the current series are all wild flowers - either from the French or the Austrian countryside or from places a few minutes away from my studio in Vienna, near train and subway stations or abandoned construction sites. Ultimately, everything is about selective attention, about being aware of things that have been there all along but went unnoticed. It took me years to realise there is a wide variety of wild flowers close to my studio. ST: The Mud Paintings are made from nature for nature and you exhibited them in their natural environment, the forest. Are your Mud Paintings meant to last or to fade away