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Although I have a love for words, certain pictures speak their own very interesting language, both coming as an impulse to a receptive artist and later on, as a statement transmitted to a hopefully as perceptive audience. Long after I have painted an image, it may dawn on me that a picture was actually telling me something. It is a great miracle each time, to realize that the silent voice of a greater power is speaking through the painting. This greater power obviously knows my needs and wishes completely.
When it comes to my own psychological phases, insights or development, the images are always there before I know what to call the notion in words, as early symbols, without me even knowing that they carry a symbolic meaning. I often feel quite silly as I paint some of them, since I may not know what it is that I am painting, and my mind tells me they are ridiculous and unnecessary.
At other times I have felt nearly obsessed by a concept, for exampel peace, as in the case of Blue Tropics, an image painted through tears, as I watched the breaking news of the horrors of Kosovo in the 90ies. The day after, the painting had cried too, i.e. pigments and solution had been running down the painting and all by itself it had created an image that reminded me of a both sad and hopeful blue, tropical environment, a dreamy longing for a paradise where war was unknown, in a note of both hope and despair. In that case the function of the painting was more that of a prayer or ritual of exorcizing the aggressions of war, with a deep and intense wish for peace and outrooting of evil. Naïve perhaps?
I search for that power every time I make a painting, not always with success.
Autodidact.
Born 1959 in Karlstad, Sweden, now living in Stockholm.
Studies in film production
(production design, editing etc.) UCLA, AFI, Los Angeles 1985-87.
Studies in Earth Sciences, University of Stockholm universitet 1992-94.
