Jonathan Beer interviews painter David Schnell about his work and practice. The exhibition David Schnell: morgen is now on view at Galerie Eigen+Art, Leipzig, Germany through December 15, 2012.

Schnell comments: "There is this amazing moment when a click happens. In almost every painting there is this moment when something little happens and you say ‘Ok, that’s it!’ Perhaps there are a few small things after that, but that’s mostly it. I cannot describe how or when this happens, but, sometimes I think that I have to do a lot of things and then a little thing does it. In the last few years, things changed a lot. I used to have much clearer ideas about how the painting should look but now, in the last two or three years, things are just developing out of the painting process itself, drops and drips. It’s difficult to say…it’s magic! [Laughs] Sometimes I equate painting to physics or mathematics…there are many possibilities but in the end there is only one way to find a particular painting. The funny thing is that I’ll have a studio visit, and other people will realize when the painting is finished. They notice the same little thing I do that finishes the painting. One thing I love about painting is that it’s not very describable. In German we say Gesetzmäßigkeit, it’s so open but also very fixed."