In my spare time, I've indulged in occasional painting activities for some twenty years. Self-taught, I sometimes felt the need to take a few brief drawing and painting courses to improve the quality of my canvases and satisfy my need to learn.

Although I was enjoying this hobby, there were several occasions when I felt I had reached my limits, which the experience I'd gained and the courses I'd taken couldn't overcome. I had the feeling of "reaching a ceiling", whereas my wish was to go beyond an amateur pictorial activity.

Having picked up my brushes again after a fifteen-year hiatus, one day I crossed the threshold of the L'Artquarium workshop. Since then, not a week has gone by that I haven't discovered techniques or methods designed to enable me to make tangible progress, particularly in the art of composition.

I learn the language of painting and its expressive tools, such as shapes, rhythms and equivalences. I discover and learn to practice the sometimes complex rules of composition and geometric structure, essential prerequisites for the creation of any image, figurative or abstract. I learn to observe and analyze works and masterpieces by ancient and contemporary artists.

I discover and learn to practice the complex theory of colors: contrasts, their tonality, their values, their weight, their temperature, the material itself.

I'm learning not to give in to impatience. Without losing sight of the need to create, I force myself to subordinate the placing of an image on a support to in-depth reflection on several preliminary stages. In this way, I discover that painting is, in a way, a way of praising slowness, but an organized slowness. And when I'm not in class, I practice.

Artquarium gives me what I've been looking for for a long time: the rigorous and demanding learning of techniques, tools and methods, designed to help me progress in the difficult art of composition, not without effort, but for my greatest pleasure.

I'm 64 and learning to be a painter!

Gilbert Künzi