English Summary 1-2009

Lars Holm
By Jacqueline Stare
Lars Holm worked as a set designer for some thirty years before the role as a teacher and watercolour painting got the upper hand. He is fascinated by rooms, whether it is a stage or showrooms and every exhibition is to him a pleasurable challenge. Lars Holm is an autodidact aquarellist. In 1984, he attended a two-week watercolour course under the guidance of Arne Isacsson. It was then that he decided in earnest on watercolour painting and it was his teacher who instilled the courage into him to seriously start to paint in watercolours. To be an aquarellist means that you have a technical know-how but it is almost as much a question of rapidly making good use of the unexpected, of taking advantage of spots arising on the paper. They can be let be as they are or he uses them in his compositions. The whole surfaces – irrespective of the format of the pictures – and what happens during the course of the work is important to Lars Holm. The faces and the portraits that Lars Holm now is working with since a couple of years back, are sometimes almost magical and very suggestive. The “Portraits”, well, they may have a real model as a basis, but the “Faces”, they do not belong to living human beings. They are wonderous, sometimes sad, sometimes ethereal.

Kristin Thorkelsdóttir
By JBK Ransu
Kristin Thorkelsdóttir was born in Reykjavik in 1936. At the age of 15, she was accepted into the School of Arts and Craft where she studied painting under the guidance of Sverrir Haraldsson among other torchbearers of abstract painting in Iceland. Kristin Thorkelsdóttir showed geometric abstractions at the annual autumn show of visual artists in 1955. She then put painting aside and began a career in graphic design. In 1984, Kristin bought a set of watercolours on a fishing trip with her family. From there on there was no turning back. The desire for the visual arts had returned after almost 30 years of pause. A year later, Kristin had her first show of watercolours at the Gallery Langbrók in Reykjavik. For the past 25 years, Kristin Thorkelsdóttir has devoted herself to landscape watercolours. No other painting medium has entered or re-entered her art. Her pictures are always done spontaneously and meditatively from the beginning to end. They are never fixed or revised afterwards, for she aspires the directness and freedom of painting the scenery that in any given moment may enrapture her mind. Kristin Thorkelsdóttir is also a skilled drawer which is apparent in her watercolours and has a keen eye for perspectives in close-ups and from afar. For a while she would also draw portraits, but in recent years she has adapted them into watercolour.

Annika Wihl
By Jacqueline Stare
Annika Wihl is, just like her mother Inger Wihl (akvarellen No. 2/2008), basically a textile stylist. They have never competed with each other but gone their own way. On the contrary, they have taken and are taking pleasure in each other! Recently they had an exhibition together in Borås, which attracted great attention, in which Inger Wihl showed textiles and Annika Wihl a number of watercolours. What Annika Wihl today really wants to busy herself with is watercolour painting and that has taken up a bigger and bigger space in her life. In the 1970´s already, she had Arne Isacsson as a teacher, but it is not until recent years that she has been able to devote herself more and more to painting. Light conditions and atmospheres mean a lot when Annika Wihl seeks her motifs. Nature is an important source of inspiration to her but also people: in more or less marked portrait form and in different connections. In intense sketches in black Indian ink she tries to capture the personality of the models just as well as their positions. Yet another choice of subject is to depict environments and old objects. Things that have to do with people and traditions, not least from the life around her. One is never too young, or too old, to start to paint or, like Annika Wihl, to almost re-start. And it is possible to go on, to find new ways. The word “develop” is worn and can be misunderstood, but it is interesting to see that suddenly anything can happen!