I work at the two dimensional field in Northern Norway.
That is the motive for these pages. As of recently I stopped painting but continued drawing. Something had to give and I was in no position to stop drawing. So I sit at my desk and draw a few hours a day. I’m looking at if it’s a good idea to repeat myself.
The foundation of my current work is a body of work on paper that has been going on since the early nineties. My beginnings was traditional. We would draw nudes and stills at Einar Granum Art School in Oslo. It was just before the new modernity hit the art world in full force and most of what we saw in Oslo was painting and elaborate installations. There was no video or photo or computers at the school just charcoal, pencils and oils. It probably makes me of the last generation of traditionally trained artists in Norway.
My fascination with the basic tools of art and my totally oblivious regard for theory soon enough sent me away from the mainstream. I left the larger villages of Norway and went back home which is virtually deserted. I got my first proper studio in Vesteraalen in an old obsolete hospital in the room where my mother was born. Over two periods and 7 years I struggled there slightly too obsessed with the concept of art or simply making marks and looking at it.
Art can be a black hole sucking upp everything you throw at it. A good idea is to let it go and be amused and occasionally disturbed. A good practical example is that it is quite possible to spend a lifetime working on a single canvas and achieve formidable sucsess with the result.
I draw, read and restore our old house in Stokmarknes.
Hopefully these pages will give an account of those three aspects without too many diversions. First things first – drawings 1995 – 2013.
papirarbeider(at)gmail.com
