My own version of You

2025

Sweden

During my artist residency at Ricklundgården, Saxnäs, Sweden, I made over 60 paintings and drawings.

Mainly of mountains,

I became obsessed with them, especially a mountain named Ropen that stood opposite my residence.

I made friends with it and painted it multiple times in different lights and times of the day,

blues and greens and purples

sun, clouds, thunderstorms and in the middle of the night with the 'midnight sunset' common in places near the artic circle during the summer

.

It is tradition here for artists to visit Saxnäs to paint the mountains and I found it hard not to do the same.

it was refreshing to paint en plein air and to walk through forests and over mountains, alone...

connecting to nature, and to myself and the joy of painting ones surroundings,

especially when these surroundings are the beautifully overwhelming mountains

that look like waves, stopped in motion

Demanding to be painted.

 

sometimes I felt like was the only human left, alone with the shadows of the trees and the sky, and the spirits that dwell in mystical Swedish nature.

this is my love letter to them,

captured in spirit