Andreas Golder, painter: 'I call sculpture my hobby. I do it when I am bored'

Karen Wright meets the painter in his studio in Berlin

Armed response: Andreas Golder in his studio in Berlin's Weissensee (Oliver Mark)

Andreas Golder has been working in this building in the Weissensee sector of Berlin for five years. He is one of three permanent residents, while other studios are for those staying temporarily. In the walkway outside, a small swimming pool with a few bedraggled palm trees adds a touch of faded, Hollywood-style glamour to the entrance.

Golder has an interesting history. Born in 1979 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, he started his training in art at the age of six, at a special school for gifted children. His parents encouraged him to become an artist – his stepfather is an artist, his mother an art historian, something that he at first eschewed, wanting to become a car designer. But eventually he gave up on his rebellious teenage dreams and became an artist. He followed his first love to Berlin and has lived in the city ever since, although he goes back to Russia to see his family.

Although he is both a painter and a sculptor, Golder says: "I call sculpture my hobby. I do it when I am bored." His paintings are powerful, the more abstract ones giving up their meaning slowly as the eye adjusts to reading the multiple layers of paint.

"All these pieces are based on something I have seen: the Berlin sky in the winter, dark and very dark."

Golder was in the midst of a successful career, signed to a large gallery in London, when he quit for a while to regroup. The gallery wanted him to keep painting in a certain style, something that he was not prepared to do. Looking at the wide variety of works on display, I see their concern. What unites them is their sensitivity to the properties of paint and his determination not to flinch from tough subject matter.

"I do not want it to be brutal in the end. I want it to be sad in the end. I am always interested in the contrast; you take a brutal image and you do not want to make it look brutal."

When I visit he is preparing to host 120-plus famous and emerging artists in a show to highlight the talent that is flourishing in Berlin. Timed to correspond with "gallery weekend" it is called "artist weekend". We are interrupted constantly by people with questions for him as co-curator: "Where is the cable?" "Where is the pizza from yesterday?"

He laughs, but quickly returns to being serious. "I was trained in Russia as an academic painter so I am using those skills in abstract paintings. It is so interesting that we have all this variety of techniques so why not use them?"

Golder admits that in the summer he lives in the studio so he can get an early start painting after a dip in the pool. "The good thing about painting is you keep discovering new things. That is what is exciting".