Reality can seem like a barrage of information, sounds, claims, facts, lies, worries and everything in between. It's easy to forget who you are and why you exist. The forest offers an alternative, where you can only hear nature and you also have time to listen. After a while I hear more than wind and birds.

 

I remembered a pond where I used to skate on the black ice as a child. It is small and unassuming and close to a dirt road. It is a place that is easy to find and not far from where I grew up. It has been my starting point for the last few years.

 

In the studio, the work is based on a photographic model and the place, that is, the pond, is the source of my work. It is important, but the model is quickly put away. It is only the first igniting spark.

 

Painting with marker on thick rag paper means that it cannot be removed or redone, so chance plays a crucial role. It is stimulating and frustrating to be faced with something irreversible that gives the picture expression I could not have foreseen. This makes the work more about discovery than about depicting, the pond comes to me more than me painting it. In choosing materials I leave room for chance that frees and unleashes impulses and whims, and suddenly I am carrying branches and small logs home with me, from the forest around the pond.