The rose is my trademark

Me and my rose 2019

Henrik Dietrich Saar

BIO

Henrik Saar was born in Denmark near the German border. Son of a Danish mother and a German father, who started an architecture and construction company in Fredericia back in the 7’ties, where Henrik grew up working at his office: Saar’s drawing office since he was a child. Henrik was a competitor in swimming and trained hard every day. One day in 1981, after a running competition, he got a stroke, which left him paralyzed on the entire left side of his body. To replace the loss, use the same volume of energy, and satisfy his hunger for competition, he started drawing and writing besides exercising in a fitness center to recover. Unfortunately, he was hit by epilepsy because of brain surgery, and he had to live with that.
 As he grew older, he learned about architecture and thought he would someday be an architect. One problem was that he had no interest in houses, construction, or buildings, nor was he very practical. He liked the drawings a lot, but he didn’t know what to do with this weird interest in cartoons. To do something rational, he studied at the Seminary in Tønder from 1988 - 89. However, the studies were interesting; he left his studies to become a full-time artist instead. 
In 1990 he moved to Copenhagen, living isolated in artistical contemplation for two years before he met the girl who became his wife. She was from Peru and opened the door to the amazing Peruvian culture for him. They got two children, and he returned to the Seminary in 1995 to finish his studies as a Teacher in 1999. He focused on existential aesthetics in religion, art, academics, and adult education.

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1989 - A leap into a unpredictable life as a visual artist

Inspired by a fascination with the American satire magazine MAD's illustrator Don Martin's drawings and the Danish Caricature artist Roal Als. Seven years of work at my father's architect's studio, studies of right-wing extremism during world war II and the French Revolution, the breakdown of the Berlin wall, Nietzches delirious speech about the death of God, Freud's dream interpretation, Salvador Dalí's surrealistic universe, Kierkegaard's existentialistically concept of irony, and concept of Anxiety, poetry by the Danish author Thorkild Bjørnvig, Mozart's opera Don Juan, and Pink Floyd's musical interpretation of reality, in 1989, I burned all the bridges behind me. I jumped into life with the red soft forms of insecurity - into life as a full-time painter. In the beginning, I painted everything with a wide paintbrush. Soft shapes. Without much detail, and to my surprise, the painting became my soul mirror, each time revealing my Anxiety. The basic form of these soft forms of Anxiety comes from a cartoon smiley that I developed up through the 80s for diligent use as graffiti and on all surfaces that could be drawn on. As I start painting, the smile suddenly turns into a scream, and if one were to sound my early pictures, Pink Floyd's "The big gig in the sky" would be very appropriate. 

When you click on the picture you wil be lead to my youtube channel, currently with 26 videos from different times showing and telling about my art.