Paintings.

I painted these a long time ago — during my last two years of university and the few after. They're here mostly for nostalgic reasons; I don't think they have much artistic value. My daughter is prouder of them than I am, and she wanted to show them to her friends, so here we are.

They came out of an art history class and an illustration class, back when I was studying art. I got captivated by the surrealist movement — Salvador Dalí's work especially — and that's when I started working on human figures: drawings, then oils on canvas.

I've since visited two museums dedicated to him: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in his hometown of Figueres, Catalonia, and The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The one in Florida surprised me — an incredible collection of his major work and large-scale murals. It's said he cut through the floor of his studio just to fit some of the canvases inside.

Back to my own paintings — faces and hands were always the hardest part to get right. Faces especially: either they look like the person, or they don't, there's no in-between. I was chasing perfection, so I painted as many as I could during those years. Not much else to say — they were purely practice. The first one here is a close replica of Dalí's "Intra-Atomic Equilibrium of a Swan's Feather" (1947).