Back to the canvas

It’s been some time since I touched a brush or palette knife. Some thirty years, to be precise. Life simply didn’t let it happen. Not painting didn’t keep me from watching, though. But for many years, I could not transfer those impressions to the liberating domain of painting. Instead, I photographed a lot. Looking back at all those images, water appears to be a recurring theme, even in my earliest photos, which I made with a third-hand 35mm camera, and to which my parents commented something like “not again glimmering water…”. But the water kept coming, from France and Croatia, from Scotland and in Holland, and now in Sweden as well.

Over the years, I collected thousands, most of which remain data clutter on a hard disk that’s collecting dust on a shelf. Some are worth watching. But all of them connect to memories that can start a new life on canvas. So when the present doesn’t offer me inspiration, I have a vast pool of recollections to revive.