ABOUT THE LANDSCAPE-BASED PAINTINGS
...towards the end of 80´s I invented a project for myself. My ”plan” was to make some kind of "conclusion" for my earlier ventures as a painter, or at least its
sources. My idea was that I would rid myself of my "luggage", a kind of painters catharsis, to enable a totally different future evolvement…
…the project resulted in a series of paintings that took off from my earlier symbolistic work and led into a much flatter and aggressively coloured pop-type painting.
The german painter Bernd Zimmer once remarked that my paintings were "heavy metal" as he saw my work at a group show where we both participated.
I immediately adopted the phrase, adequate as it was and named the series "The Heavy Metal Pharaos" when I exhibited the paintings at my London show
six months later...
After having lived for a number of years in one of Europes most dense environments and then
found myself installed in the Italian countryside it became occurred to me that the contrast in enviroment inevitably provoked and changed my view and input.
..it gradually dawned on me that my "Heavy Metals" looked…and felt...very urban... and so eventually, being surrounded by all of that lush vegetation,
almost invading the house and certainly invading ones senses and mind…I guess it simply had to be that the greens and blues would draw my attention
as an artist…
…It did, but in a backwards kind of way - it was never the question of bringing out the easel and do ”plein air” nature studies, it was rather that of being
subjected to a long term impression, a slow and almost subconscious change of mind…and needs…
…the first landscape based painting as such, was a small image of a tree, just 25x25 cms. I sort of secretly painted on it and sneaked it in at one or two
"Heavy Metal" exhibitions. In a peculiar way it somehow appeared as the most shocking painting in that enviroment. As it was, my "heavy metal painting" era
now drew to an end. However, experiencing what happened when one combined those wildly different types of paintings, was a surprising and additive experience…
it also wetted my appetite for using it as a method in a conscious manner, that is to say - to
work with parallell series of paintings and then
also exhibit them simultaneously…
The complications regarding how to afront and try to paint a landscape appears to endlessly reinvent itself, so accordingly, the landscape-based work quickly
became a dominant preoccupation in my studio and still is.
My method, or the way the process of the landscapes is substantiated in my case, basically works thus -
The paintings are pure studio products, I am not an open air painter.
I like to beleive that my images are reconstructions of views that I have been experiencing in some manner and at some point in time, then - dilluted and
fragmentized over time they somehow fight themselves back into my consciousness. Sometimes I like to think of it as the revenge of unparticular places
and moments. Or reversed - images of places and/ or moments that could never have existed…pastoral.
The aspect of time involved also interests me a great deal - both with regard to the visual
aspects touched above, the dillution over time and with regard to the process of painting in itself. Painting a picture is a slow process, not the least in my
case and in any case not to be compared with the click of a button. The way this, in turn, affects vision and the sampling and evolvement of impressions,
pictorial memory etcetera - is interesting.
The act of painting contains many filterings, on several levels.
My travel-pictures, the ”Natura In Transit” series has the similar sources. But although they indeed also may look similar in appearance, on my own accord
the ”Landscapes” in a sense are reversals of the ”Naturas”, in being fixed or cristalized moments, or endlessly long moments in contrast to the side-vision aspect
of Natura In Transit.
I beleive that the various aspects that are mentioned above aply equally to the painting sequences that I describe as ”Landscape” and ”Natura In Transit”, the difference being that whilst the ”Landscape” paintings have a long, slow stride and reach, the Natura In Transit” paintings are faster visions - in transit…but still…of long gone moments and frozen moments.
Although I have tried to glimpse in at my motivations and sources as to why I try to paint some landscape paintings in the various text extracts above.
I strongly beleive that there are arguable reasons why it is indeed impossible and anyway would
be superflouos for me to attempt describing the poetical and philosophical core and values of my own work at depth .
K.J.Lilliesköld - November 2002
