1977 Kotka
I base my painting on materiality and physicality. A landscape is often repeated on the canvas. A landscape provides me with a way of dealing with issues that are related to painting. It functions as an intermediary. You cannot imitate a landscape, as its very being denies direct representation. Although we experience landscape as a single whole, it is sublime, and therefore always more than the sum of its parts. A landscape is not limited to the visible. This is why my paintings are not so much about the tradition of landscape painting as they are about seeing and the experience of seeing, the visible and the invisible. I am pursuing suggestions of how to present this “terra incognita”, a space that is not in this world, but rather dwells within our minds. A work is successful when I feel that it includes a hint.
I contemplate these things by painting. Contemplation means removing the paint or letting it be; emptiness and filling the emptiness. The inexistence of a physically established space.
I am fascinated by the idea that there is no wrong or right in a painting. There is only colour on canvas and a person’s mind.
