statement

OVER THE LAST TWENTY YEARS I have focused especially on movement, physical and psychological processes with painting as the main medium. I am mainly working on large pieces, which I find more interesting in the sense that they are more physically demanding and provide the artist with less control.

The works try to render visual inner and archaic images, in some part belonging to our common collective archive. A central point in this project is an almost archeological excavation of body and mind; where everything is observed, both with distance and unreserved closeness. 

Shamanistic traditions, yoga and mythology are starting points and inform much of the work, but more so as layers or energy rather than precise reference.

I AM INTERESTED in the thin line and the distinction we too readily make between the beautiful and the ugly, the pleasing and the disquieting—physical spaces or states of mind which appear known and unknown, familiar and repulsive at the same time, but that without doubt have an air of presence and energy. An important point for me is where one state of the painting changes into another; that intersection where everything is simultanously moving and standing still.

I purposely use many different ways of painting and styles to make the surface appear as contrasting worlds. With a wry glance one could argue that the works appear as a loud combination of expressionism and Hilma af Klint. Post ironic? Definetely, but the observer’s gaze is still present. The works are mainly abstract, but have lot of complex cross-references. It is a story that has no end. Something always eludes us. There is a contrast between geometric and dissolving shapes, like something which is always in the process of changing into something else. A continual exchange between order and chaos.

THE PAINTINGS are mostly produced in series and are a mix of method and structuring with a more intuitive approach. Elements are enlarged, reduced, multiplied or banished. The last stroke or something unexpected in one painting serves as the beginning on a new canvas. Thematically they layer themselves on top of one other, where all elements carry on, but in a transformed state.

I am looking to achieve an experience which envelops the viewer, but where the paintings also have energy and presence in their own right.

Anne Siv Falkenberg Pedersen, 2023