1983 Stockholm, Sweden
The painting event
My approach to painting is comprehensively physical and intuitive. I rarely plan ahead as I know that everything takes place exactly then and there.
Last year I was finishing a few paintings in a rather traditional manner, but I nevertheless managed to set myself free of the tradition by taking my inspiration from music in particular. I think that by rediscovering Miles Davis, I also realized the significance of improvisation to my work. Coltrane and all others followed thereafter.
In my paintings I strive for the same kind of directness that may be manifested in virtuosic improvisation. In my recent works I have already transferred the painting around me, into a space.
References to and borrowings from the tradition of painting are equally intuitive. They are past, intense experiences of the paintings that I have seen. Similarly, I experience all paintings by identifying with them or living through them. One time my friends had to force me out of the museum. I had become enthralled by the world of Cézanne.
I forget the surrounding reality when I identify my painting. At my best, I am able to paint as if I were surrendering myself and moving to a place outside myself. At the same time I am also forgetting myself. In a way, the painting signifies pure energy in motion.
I would like to be able to crystallize this energy and transfer the motion into time.
Â
Â