Artist Statement
Klikk her for norsk tekstMy relationship to the visual has for a long time been one that starts with phenomenology, for example Merleau-Ponty's assertion that we are immersed in the worlds that are around us.
Painting is perhaps my sounding board to the world, but my practice also involves, drawing, installation, writing and photography. I spend a great deal of time in landscapes, walking, drawing, writing and being. My painting often becomes informed by this activity. The visual language evolves from this contact with specific sites and landscapes and the peoples who inhabit these places. Melancholic atmospheres attract me.
I am concerned with the ephemeral and transient. Water as a phenomenon and as humanity’s most important resource is a subject I have always been, and am still, fascinated by. But the exploration of the feeling of space and a reconnecting with a world we do not know is perhaps the centre of my practice.
I involve myself in a highly subjective phenomenological exploration of certain specific places. Situations become disquieted confused and decomposed and the observer becomes involved in a process where new constellations of time and place meet each other.
Illuminations Atlanterhavet is the title of my on-going project on vulnerable and threatened landscapes connected to the North Sea and facing the Atlantic Ocean:
As part of this I have explored Tenerife, Brittany, Jæren and different stretches of the Norwegian coast. In June 2019 I made a journey to the northern Outer Hebridean islands of Lewis and Harris for the first time. This journey was a part of a planned series of journeys to the wild and open spaces of north-western Scotland, the second of which will take the southern islands, the Uists, Benbecula and Barra at a later stage. These fragile landscapes are situated on the outer edges of Europe. They are places of myth permeated with history and include coastlines, mythical landscapes, and forest. Parts of these places are also disappearing because of climate change.
The paintings and drawings originating in this project allude to moments and light qualities captured from time to time. Lightness and distinctness as well as the diffuse are parts of my language. A sort of spontaneous calligraphic vocabulary evolves because of contemplating these places and spaces of experience. I try to keep my work open and fluid.
I am concerned with the lightness of touch and the subtlety of tone in my work, the barely discernible interaction of tones and tints – An attempt to make space tangible by touching just parts of it.
My paintings and drawings evolve slowly in relation to each other. Process is very important and allows space for doubt, for accumulation and concentration.
I attempt to encourage a slow kind of looking, where you become bewildered, where the viewer becomes involved and where painting is kept as a living entity.
I am interested in gestural and minimalist abstraction as a direct expression of a phenomenon and, am, for example, inspired by the utter simplicity of the line drawings of Matisse and the way they evoke space; they are seemingly effortless, but completely about presence. Matisse makes me want to draw.
—
A biographical note:
My background is from Saint Martin’s School of Art and Goldsmiths College, London where I studied during the dynamic 70s. I was inspired by the spirit of the time, amongst other things: the analysis and poetics of space, environment, perception– how we read and interpret the world and conceptual thinking. I became especially interested in environmental issues and travelled to Norway on a scholarship from the British Council/Norwegian UD to become more closely acquainted with, amongst other things, the geography and topography of Norway. I have lived and had my base in Bergen, on the Western coast of Norway for many years, but still have a deep affinity with the UK.