Edge of Desire · Chapter I

Learning to See

Bali, Indonesia · 2012–2013

I had a backpack, a folded paper ticket, a guidebook with soft corners, and a Canon that left a red mark on the back of my neck by the end of every afternoon.

I wasn't trying to become a photographer. I was trying to take as much of this new world home as I could.

Bali was not my first trip abroad. But it was the first place where every ordinary thing felt worth remembering.

Wet volcanic stone after rain.
Offerings already fading by 9am.
A scooter and incense and salt in one breath.
Frangipani on temple steps.
Coffee that cost almost nothing and tasted like it knew something.

The eye woke up before the hand did.

First Asia Camera Before Brush Bali · 2012 Observation Before Authorship Before Social Media

Rice terraces in morning light — arriving before knowing what to look for — Bali, Indonesia · 2012

A small offering on a pavement — the ordinary placed with impossible care — First days · 2012

From first day was already afraid of forgetting it.

Camera on a beach, the tool waiting for attention

Flower arrangement as ritual repetition — colour before meaning

The First Asia

I had been to Europe. I had seen cities older than memory.
But nothing had ever looked like this.

Read the Story

My brother gave me Asia for my birthday.
Bangkok. Bali. Singapore. Hong Kong. Macau. Twelve days. An entirely reasonable itinerary.
We boarded the plane the night of my birthday, straight after the party. I properly sobered up somewhere on a boat in Bangkok, feeding carp roughly the size of household furniture.
It was unbearably hot. The food was so spicy I would have traded state secrets for a glass of milk. Rats the size of well-fed cats ran through the alleys. People prayed beside them.
Bangkok felt as if someone might rob you, kill you and feed you to those enormous carp.
And then we flew to Bali.

Surf Van — acrylic painting of a vintage red Volkswagen van on a tropical beach at sunset — Surf Van

Acrylic on canvas · 40 × 60 cm · 2012

Frangipani — acrylic painting of white and yellow plumeria flowers on a blue batik background — Frangipani

Acrylic on canvas · 40 × 60 cm · 2012

What the Camera Kept

I kept turning the camera in opposite directions.
Somehow it was always the same island.

Carved stone layered with time and rain — attention before knowledge

Hands near fabric and offering — the gesture of care inside ordinary daily life

Shadow and green growth on a wall — light as subject, not as effect

Tropical Sunset — acrylic painting, golden palm silhouettes against a hazy sky — Tropical Sunset · 30 × 50 cm Acrylic on canvas · 2013

Field Note

I expected paradise.
Instead, I found contradctions.

Read the Note

My mother described Bali perfectly:
"It smells of flowers and shit."
That was it.
Incense. Frangipani. Clove cigarettes. Wet stone. Offerings on the pavement. Scooters everywhere.
After Bangkok, even the rats seemed reassuringly small.

And Bali wasn't particularly interested in being Paradise. The traffic was terrible. The ocen wasn't postcard-perfect. Half the time I didn't understand what I was eating.

I loved it almost immediately.
I still couldn't have told you why.

A young person photographing from the beach — the act of looking captured

A street scene with a truck, palm trees, wires — the unglamorous real

Inside a boat, afternoon light, coffee cups — the quiet shared moment

A quiet shared moment in tropical light — the world becoming larger in someone else's company

Who Was There

Some people stay on our memories simply because they happened to be standing next to you the first time the world became bigger than home.

Open the Memory

We were staying at a surf camp. Evenings meant cocktails, shisha, barbecue and whoever happened to still be awake.
There was a hockey player I liked. We talked, flirted, and were about to go out together.
And then there was Kirill.
Kirill had a fiancee.
He had been very clear about that - right until the moment the hockey player and I were ready to go.
Suddenly the hockey guy was apparently not a suffiecently reliable man to accompany me through Kuta.
"You need a proper man with you"
I asked if he meant himself. Apparently, for that particular night, he did.
Sky Garden, bustling Kuta streets, Nasi Goreng with bintang shared on the temple stairs, talks till sunrise followed.
At some point he told me with impressive confidence, that he was not the kind of man I should fall in love with.
Naturally, this information proved completely useless.

A year later we met in Bali again> We shared a bottle of whisky, jumped into a swimming pool fully dressed, and eventually went our separate ways.
Some stories don't need a better ending.

Sunset over anchored boats — the day closing, attention still awake

Frangipani flowers in water bowl — offering as colour study

Paintings in an artist's space — the return to making, layer by layer

Back to basics

For five years I hadn't painted.
I hadn't dramatically decided to stop painting. Life simply crowded it out.
University. Then work. By the time I was working on the Sochi 2014 Olympics, long working days didn't leave much room for canvases

Photography was easier. A camera could come with me.
I didn't come to Bali looking for a way back to painting. But within days, I found myself buying paper, paint and brushes again.

Early painting study — attention becoming material — Bingin · 2013
30*50cm, acrylic on canvas

Barong — 2012 — Barong · 2012
20*40cm
soft pencil, paper

Emerald Season

Mixed Media · 2013
50*70cm

I The photographs became references. The memories did whatever they wanted.

This was one of the first paintings where Bali appeared — not as a destination, but as a visual language I was still learning to read.

Looking at it now, I can see the beginning of something that would take years to fully surface. The green is not tropical. It is remembered. There is a difference.

Before there were waves, before there was Argentina, before there was anything that could be called a series — there was this. A painting that didn't know yet what it was the beginning of.

First Coast

Oil on canvas.
60*80cm · 2013

I came home and kept painting the water. Apparently, Bali wasn't finished w

Some places ask to be photographed. Others ask you to stay still long enough to notice how many colours exist inside what first looked like simply blue.

This coastline was that kind of place.

I didn't know it then, but I would spend years trying to return to this feeling — with paint instead of a passport. Not the place itself, but the specific quality of attention it asked for.

That is still what I am searching for.

First Coast — early oil painting, the ocean becoming a landscape to return to

Featured Work

Blue Lagoon

Acrylic on canvas · 60 × 80 cm, 2013

A thin stripe of sand between the wild green and an impossible blue. Somewhere, the desire to disappear begins.

Java Sunrise — acrylic painting, a row of coconut palms over a sunlit rice field with mountains beyond — Featured Work
Java Sunrise

Acrylic on canvas · 50 × 70 cm · 2014

The camera used during this period — an object that made looking feel urgent — Archive · 2012

I had no idea I was starting again

A horizon at the edge of the chapter — the world larger than it was before

The world had not changed.
I had.

I thought I was taking photos so I wouldn't forget Bali.
I didn't understand yet that Bali was teaching me what I would spend the next years looking for.
Colour. Movement. Contradiction. People.
And the strange moment, when a place stops being somewhere you've been and becomes part of how

The chapter that follows begins with a single photograph irresistible blue ice. Something shifted again. But that is a different story.

What came home with me was less poetic.
A camera full of photographs. Receipts.Bottles. Half-remembered nights. People I would lose touch with.