Artist statement

In my work I deal with personal and social issues, an individual´s relation with himself and with his surroundings by portraying social power structures which tie a person to a certain environment and conditions.

The situation of the underprivileged and marginalized people in our society, domestic violence together with the silent helplessness of an individual have all been a basis for the themes in my work. Rootlessness and a person´s quest for identity can also be found in the themes.

One of the elements I use in my paintings is the overlapping of pictures of maps, city scenes and human figures which wander about in the paintings. The map representing a modern equivalent of a labyrinth and the city scene representing the predominant rootlessness while the human figure represents a human prototype of some kind rather than an identified person.

The use of colors in my work is very much determinant of the mood I want to create in the painting. I find the strong and rich colors most fascinating. The techniques I use include tempera, water colour, acrylic paint and collage. In the collages I use maps, travel brochures and a variety of different qualities of paper.

I also work with glass. The transparency of the material, it´s intensity and vividness make glass both a fascinating as well as a multipurpose material. I also find interesting the idea of mixing painting and stained glass together with other materials inside a single work.