I am a visual artist living in Kongsberg, Norway, with an MFA Painting and Drawing from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
My art reflects my curiosity and joy in observing, understanding, and immersing myself in research. I can see beauty in the most mundane, often overlooked things. I find inspiration in the ordinary, as well as in the vast, stunning views of nature. I think of creating as something like eating, or sleeping, or getting enough daylight. It is a basic need, an itch to scratch. Life has a deficiency without it. Creating is challenging and, in a way, obsessive. Paradoxically, creating is frustrating, but in the kind of way that you might learn to enjoy.
I see myself as an observer. I use painting and drawing to investigate something over an extended period and create a representation of this reality through selection and reconstruction of visual order. My focus is on the act of transcribing and translating. The works retain traces of adjustments, documenting the negotiation between observed appearances and the layers of paint or dry media on a surface. This process is, for me, rich with pictorial and conceptual possibilities.
Oil paint is attractive to me because of the simple ingredients and straightforward application of the materials. It is a medium that promotes intimacy with the materials, which has an enormous potential for analog warmth.
Painting from observation, particularly outdoors, has been formative for my use of color and technique. Atmosphere and light tends to be my motifs regardless of subject matter. Pictorial ideas are simple, for instance, inspired by geometric shapes or perceived color relationships.
My work has been exhibited throughout Norway as well as abroad, and appears in a number of private collections. In 2016 I received a scholarship to attend a university summer program in Florence.