The Artist
Why do I paint little people on an apparently monochrome space or in empty rooms? People who has nothing to do with each other, ripped of empathy, and why do they not interconnect and again why are they not out in the nature?
The perception of the single human being of powerlessness within the system/s is basically the most central theme in all my work and so is perception, the word with so much content and so many understandings, which I aim to investigate in all my work as an artist.
How is it I and all other thinking and feeling creatures perceive what surrounds us and what happens around us and who we are!
My work in investigating perception is leaning strongly upon the practical ethics by Peter Singer and the loss of human identity in the modern in/human society as Franz Kafka and Herman Hesse circles around and describes in their works where each of us has to make many decisions.
We have to make decisions all the time and so do I when I am working on a canvas. I have to make a decision on the composition of the motif and the motif itself, how to paint it, brush strokes and which coats of paint and how many to finally end up with a delicately balanced painting.
My paintings are all in traditional style and with traditional materials. There are no unambiguous intention with my paintings but I use my personal experiences and memories as inspiration.
What I aim for in each of my paintings is that the picture itself stands as an independent work and without any attributed meaning to hang to.
The viewer should be touched by the charisma of the composition of the painting. This means that the painting necessarily must contain certain aesthetic values.
Walking around in the city or at the harbour it happens I get a glimpse in my eye of my coming painting and then I paint it with this mental image as my pattern or this image can create out of listening to the radio or reading a book. Other pictures are painted out of personel experiences and memories from the different places I have live in the world and other paintings again are inspired out of old photos from family members and friends.
Painters that are important to me:
- Eduard Manet
- Edvard Hopper
- Edgar Degas
- Gerhard Richter
- J. F. Willumsen
- Jesper Christiansen
- Peter Martensen
Authors that are important to me:
- Herman Hesse
- Franz Kafka
- Jens Gielstrup
- Albert Camus
- John Milton
- Thomas Piketty
- Peter Singer
My life has been split between the technical/commercial and the artistic; but I do not regret my life has been as it has. I would not be the one I am without this past of mine that has led to the one I am today.
Born January 1947 in Hou, Denmark.
"Learn a trade before you go for the arts," was the credo of my father. I have studied electronics, computer science and economics and have had a career within the IT and financing industry in the USA, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Germany.
Having lived 30 years abroad from the country where I was born and raised, Denmark , I am not sure how much Danish I still am. Having lived half of my life, till now, in other cultures it is not to be prevented I am under other influences.
Though I have visited the academies of Venice , Prof. Mario Abis, Sep. 1980 - Dec. 1983 and Stuttgart, Prof. Per Kirkeby, 01.09.89 - 30.05.90, I do not have received a formal training in the arts and therefore I consider myself as a self-taught artist.
Among those who have had influence on my work are in particular: Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka, Jens Gielstrup, Louise Rinser, Jochen Klepper, Per Lagerkvist and off course H. C. Andersen and Soren Kirkegaard.
Of painters who have influenced me the most I have to mention Edouard Manet, Choutime, Delacroix, Jawlensky and Max Liebermann and my very first teacher Bent Lohman.
