Personal Statement
‘ Victoria ’ / Enamel on copper / 35 x 35cm / 2007
Current work
I aim to produce paintings that contain beauty as well as a solid theoretical background.
My current work attempts to evoke a Nordic sense of place. It incorporates the medieval European interpretation of landscape, seen in three dimensions, with heaven and earth being at least as important as the topographical reality of the surrounding landscape. Also Nordic myths, where Fate and Destiny are key concepts, films by the Danish film director Carl Dreyer, as well as my own experience and background.
All the paintings will be on aluminium.
Paintings of Mars
The paintings of Mars started with the synchronicity of its landscape to places on Earth. This similarity extends to the mineralogical and chemical composition of its landscape. I have used pigments in the paintings that correspond exactly to these compositions, all in their natural, organic form.
In paintings using the pigments, I was also inspired by Carl Jung’s theory of the Archetype (‘first pattern’) and his theories of the Universal Unconscious. I wanted to free my mind to form patterns that showed an ‘inherited deposit of the past experience of the human species’.
Linking this theory with the Martian pigment paintings is part of the continuing process of giving Mars, the place, a human history, where it has none.
The names on the paintings are from the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s 19th century classical list of albedo features of Mars. They form a mnemonic reference both to Mars and to the Romantic reverence landscape has evoked since the Sublime.
White Paintings
These are solid, three-dimensional canvases and are highly decorative, casting subtle shadows as light changes. They can be hung separately or grouped together to form a new piece.
