Essential themes worked in different materials

The themes following below represent the fundamental principles, on which many of my paintings are build upon. 

Don't be chocked over the weight and the depth in these themes. It's just the dark soil in which my roots stand. If you look at my new paintings, you'll see that I work more openminded today, seeking the more bright side of myself :)

SPIRITUAL song- To have an internal dialogue.

My absolute nuclear artwork

An internal dialogue might be dificult to explain in a relieable way, but never the less do I have such one. There has always been something speaking to me, that's where I become religious and spirituel. It means everything to me, and helps me survive even the most dificult situations. I'm convinced about, that everything has it's reason. 
The poem, "Spiritual hymn" tells about creating in a process like a double edged sword cutting a part of myself and a part of the wold, that made me. This sentence has been my fundamental ideology ever since, and makes it reasonable to considder "Spiritual hymn" as my absolute nuclear artwork. Not necessarely the best, but the most significant for myself.

Oil painting from my yellow period 1992

Spiritual song

One day I find myself wearing brown monk's robe. 

Seated squatting in a subtile turbulently landscape. 

Bald and with a naked branch laid in my hands,

I sing stanzas, which not even I myself have known before.

Stanzas that seem to multiply and form themselves

Just right next to my own physical presence.

An independent world of stanzas growing and piling up,

excites me to the absolute breaking point, 

and triggers in the creation of a grotesque performance.

A performance that in a glance of recognition

lets itself be revealed as a double-edged sword,

which in fine but painfully cut cuts a piece of myself,

and a piece of this world, that I am made of.

castration Anxiety - From the deepest roots

The intense years 1990 - 1992

From I started in a life as a full-time artist in 1990, the first 2 years were very intense and critical. My dad had stated in my life decision that if I just thought life was pure bohemian, he would lose all respect for me, but if I really managed to realize a life as an artist, then would be full of admiration.
This sparked a true fanatism and military discipline around my art, and I started by locking myself in my room for 2.5 years, with 16 hours of drawing, painting, studying and thinking every day. - Afraid not to perform well enough. The depth that came out of it in the themes and colors of my paintings in the following is enormous, and gained extra power by receiving from 1991 the teaching of painting by the Swedish / Danish artist Håkan nystrõm.
Castration anxiety is a very complex painting, part of the whole anxiety thematic, and relates to one's own anxiety about not being able to perform - compared to not being able to get an erection.
I've always disliked this painting, and it's been hidden for a long time. It is only now that I sucessfully have created a family and begin to gain recognition as an artist that I can bear to look at it again. Perhaps this is precisely the story of the essential role of this painting. It is part of the fuel that has kept me working for 30 years: an ever-pulsating energy to reach my goals (In the subtle content of the picture: castration anxiety or the struggle to maintain an "erection") = The fear of loosing force. From that point of view, this painting is absolutely essensial as well as "Spiritual song" 

castration Anxiety - Oil on canvas 73 x 92 cm. 1992

ANXIETY - A fundamental condition in life.

Anxiety is a theme that most people know more or less, and the energy coming from there has a big impact on our lives; thus, in my art, which often ends up with a rather manically expression like balancing on a line, afraid of falling. The only place I feel peace is while creating my art. Reflectively I must recognize anxiety as a huge energy source in my art and, thus, not necessarily a negative phenomenon. It's just a question of being confident with this weird phenomenon and accepting it as something fundamental. At least for me, it's an unavoidable theme in my art. 

Sketches made in 1991. At that time I was really inspired by Pink Floyd's "The wall", where the movie showed scenes about anxiety, which had affected me a lot ever since my Highscool years 1985 - 86. It was here I really begann feeling this weird restless energy-source of wanting to express myself visually all the time. I found something satisfying by sitting for myself and just drawing, writing and listening to music.
I think it's a way of fighting the basic anxiety of the coming adult world.

Captured the final composition

Drawing with pencil and technical pen. A4. 1992 Stairs for the escalating anxiety and diagonally composition fro the dramatical in the situation.

Anxiety

A sucking force,

an inner pulling through me

a warm wind through my freezing body,

distant voices infinitely far from here,

escalating sounds of unbearable echoes in my head,

the space around me expands uncontrollably

In fetal position  I'm trying to protect myself,

now only deep breaths.

The final painting: Anxiety 25 x 34 cm.

About that time I was learning the transparent techniques by the Swedish artist Håkan Nyström, and it shows in the very accurate way of painting here. It became like drawings with paint, but at least I learned to control the process.

ANXIETY - Linocut 25 x 33 cm.

2 figures of Anxiety in Ceramics 1998

Anxiety - Stoneware clay 16 x 16 x 8 cm.

Anxiety - Red clay 15 x 11 x 7 cm.

MELANCHOLY - Headstone to my art's mol tone

I've always enjoyed my lonely hours, but never felt boring therein. I have a rare passion for the souls depth, which aotomatically brings one in a state of the dialectically phenomene: "Happy sadness. This layed together with some extremely tough years hit by a violent course with life-threatend diseases, accidents and dramatic upheavals.
But somehow I'm happy with it. My lifes story has really given me the greatest and most interesting tour through life. I should feel sad about all the wounds and pain it has cost me so far, but weird enough, I'm happy with the big amount of bad experiences. I 've survived them, and feel so much more experienced in life. With it I'm capeable of taking advantage of the melancholy of my life and express something profound about life. 

Melancholy

After years of protracted, confusing and exhausting walks, 
 non answered reverent prayers, unfulfilled hopes and eternal longings.
 After many long attempts against a non breakrable wall
 and after time after time to have appeared in new disguises,
 I walk now only with eyes focused on the red ground under my feet.

 With a flabby purple cloak put on my naked overdue body,
 I move to the sound of deep throat-humming sounds tones rhythmically forward, 
 dragging the family's heavy burdensome handcart after me -
 an involuntary heritage as life's heavy load and absolute judgment.

 Bended frontover and with an unprecedented happy feeling of indifference , 
 leave I with all caution my measured steps in the dust, 
 a volatile trail through this maze of winding alleyways, 
 whose nearest exit on both attractive and repulsive way, 
 looks like being an final parting.

Passionate suffering and the rose's symbolism

Passionate suffering was an explanation or expression for the recognition of the right of suffering. It goes along with the martyrium - This here about sacrificating onesself to reach the ultimate beauty, or the ultimate delighted feeling after all. More pain gives major satisfaction. It's a weird phenomene, that most people deny, but for those, who have a fighter instinct it makes sence. There are not such thing as just passion and beauty nor just pain and suffer. The world is made of a dialectically combination between the two components, just like: The must be darkness to show the light. 

Obviously this goes very well along with the red rose's symbolism: It is as beautiful as it can be and may even lead your thought on a woman's genitals, which already therein a temptational flower, but it has thorns, which may hurt you, if you ain't careful. Careless treatment of the immediate given rose may fast turn into a blod red experience instead of a emotional red love experience. Taking off the flower will leave you back with the thorns, and there we are not far from the thorn crone known from the passion and suffer of Christ. 
There is so much more about to tell about the rose, but I think, I've got the essential parts of it here. It's written here to give a hint about, why I paint the rose in several of my paintings. The rose is simply is a symbol of my fundamental theme:
Passionate suffering.

In pain - Pencil A4

Cover to CD catalogoue from my thematical exhibition at the Museum: Centro Cultural De La Accademia D Bellas Artes, Lima in Peru, where I had 59 artworks transported and exhibited in Peru in 2003 - Obviously I called my exhibition: SUFRIMIENTOS PASIONALES or en English: PASSIONATE SUFFERING.

In this painting "THE OTHERS" are sacrificating nothing, which doesn't make sence. Those who stick to nothing are no more than nothing in my point of view - Like roses without thorns or passion without suffering. 

The gift - Here I use the two roses in a way, symbolising two independent lifes, who seem almost aggressive like snakes ready to attack eachother. But at the same time the man in the picture has got a gift packed in pink giftpaper. This looks to be something nice. So what is going on? There is a door to another room and a closet in the corner - everything very mystical. What is the content of the gift? 
Thats my own personal dialogue with this painting: What am I receiving in my life after having painted that?
So far a lot, but most remarkable is, that this painting won the Goldmedal in the Medusa Aurea contest at AIAM in Rome, so I received the international prize as Best painter of the year 2018 - 2019 - That's a fine gift so far. 

MY ROOM

My room - Isn't just a room, it's my world

In order to set myself free to be myself i isolated myself volontarily in my room for 2 years with drawings, paintings, books with philosophy, psychology, history, classic litterature and music, learning to become just myself in that freedom it requests to create exactly that profound art, I from the very beginning was longing. That's why I painted a cross blocking the door from the inside in the painting below. I didn't wish to be disturbed.

I often use these self created rooms as scenario for some act in my painting, or sometime just the empty room, but it's always to understand as a mental room, which I use to tell a pictorial story.

Self created isolation - Oil on canvas 80 x 80 cm.

I met Liliana and my room's walls broke down

Finishing the painting below Liliana got pregnant

Plan-drawing for my painting: "Opus 1" 60 x 60 cm.1993 This was, what I learned by my father, who was an independent architect with his own Architect office, where I worked a lot of my time as a teenager making copies of the architect's drawings and playing around with my own drawings.

Opus 1 - Oil on canvas 114 x 116 cm. 1994

FREEDOM

Freedom

Hovering in uplifting  warm aircurrents,
I fly expectantly and freely through the time,
freedom, oh wonderful freedom!
Only a winner wins freedom,
 and the prize of the freedom is to be a  winner.

 Who Nothing ventured is no winner,
nothing is namely nothing compared with freedom,
the free has ventured everything to avoid the nothing. 

 
Overcome ones own fears lifts up the spirit to be light,
to stare the predator in the eyes gives a predator force,
Then let all humility be the a feather in fierce winds,
and let it drown in powerful rain showers,
knocked to the ground by hail and icy cold.

Oh freedom! Ain't compareable  with nothing, 
only  everything is suficient to measure by,
and to fight the principles of mediocrity gives wings.

You'll get spirit united with body in new light altitudes, 
nothing disappears and everything is a new creation, 
oh freedom!

Learning to fly - Oil on canvas 120 x 85 cm. 2014

Liliana - Love of my life

Liliana and our daughter - Oil on cardboard 33 x 41 cm. 1997

Liliana came from Peru and was visiting Denmark when I met her. Marrying her in 1992 was a dare, because we hardly knew each other. Yet we were married for 26 years, and still have very close ties to each other, alone in that we have two children together.
Liliana comes from a very Catholic home and I quickly became a part of both her Latin American culture, religion and language, and we have lived in Peru for some time.
Liliana is named after the Virgin Socorro Perpetuo, who is the Divine Eternal Helping Angelic figure. She has filled that role well, and it is this Maria-like figure that I have painted several times in my paintings. I've always painted it with Liliana in my mind.
To show all the paintings in which Liliana plays a direct or indirect role would be incomprehensible, because she is one of my basic factors in life and thus of course also in my painting.

My Peruvia wife - Oil on shipboard 81 x 65 cm. 1994

Liliana Shine - Oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm. 2010

To live as a family together, but separately

In 2014, we decided to live separately, which the two paintings above are about, even though I painted them before we even got that far. On the other side of the separation, 3 years followed, where we continued to be together, but lived separately. I painted this a whole series of paintings that are all about this contemporary marriage. They are easy to recognize, as I've used circular windows for composition in these paintings.
 

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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. 

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