Painting realism had been interesting for me only in the context of surrealistic forms of presentation. On the other hand, technical perfection has always been important for me and what could be a better benchmark for it than reality itself.
It was interesting to discover that a very realistically painted subject catches far more attention than a photo of the same thing. This is actually a bit unfair, because a good photo shot very often requires a lot of patience and photographic know-how.
Originally, photography evolved from the foundation and principles of painting. Today, most super-realistic paintings could not be realized without prior photographic work.
In the eighties and nineties important magazines like Stern, Spiegel and Geo, commissioned me to create paintings for their cover pages because of my ability to depict the impossible "super-realistically".
With the rapid development of computers and programs it is now possible to compose and develop subjects much faster on the screen.