English Summary 2-2015

Peter Vilhelm Nielsen
by Marianne Gross
On one of his train rides through Denmark, Peter V Nielsen got the idea for the theme of his latest series: The IC4 InterCity trains. The IC4 trains ordered by the Danish Railways 14 years ago, have hardly ever been in use due to numerous technical problems. These trains stand on rails rusting and decaying and get decorated by graffiti painters. Without condoning these actions, Peter V Nielsen found the subject interesting as a theme. His style of painting must be labelled naturalistic, but his images are not realistic. He carefully arranges the graffiti in colour and form so as to suit the overall image. Often he will maintain a key motive (like two locomotives meeting “face-to-face”) but will alter the background or the decorations. He has also made high-quality prints of the basic image and then elaborated on these prints with watercolour, making them unique. He has taken the idea further and likes to paint abandoned sheds, industrial buildings and cityscapes in which he also adds graffiti. Often he will work in mixed media (print, gouache, collages) and he might add parts of photos or other small objects or images which he glues or staples on to the watercolour to create an interesting contrast.

Mounir Ben Ammar
by Jacqueline Stare
Mounir Ben Ammar lives in Sweden where he works as a high school math teacher, but he was born in Tunisia and he has lived in France for many years. Every morning before going to work he paints and draws a little while. This is also how he ends each day in order to test different colours and study various techniques. He had his first solo exhibition at the age of 16 and was awarded first prize at an exhibition for young artists. He is a self-taught artist and through all his years of studies and teaching he has always painted – using wall paint, oil paint, pastel or whatever kind of paint or medium he could get his hands on. Eventually he became allergic to oil paint and switched to watercolour. The essential part of painting for him is to observe and catch the light and the moment, and he often paints in an impressionistic manner with intense colours. Mounir Ben Ammar still spends much time in Tunisia and in France, and has exhibitions in these countries as well as in Sweden and other places. Even though he hopes for a dialogue with the spectator, the process of creating a work is more important for him than the actual result. He is fond of plein-air painting and tries to find a calm spot where he can depict the landscape or the view. In all his work he aims to convey his joy of painting.

John Eyre
by Kelly Lindblom
His childhood dream was to become a car designer, but the timing was bad due to the oil crisis when John Eyre started his studies at Konstfack College of Arts, Crafts and Design. In those days one could not even study car design, so he chose graphic form and illustration, which he also was attracted to. He is passionate about vintage American cars and travels to various events to see them, but he makes a living out of designing book covers. He finds it great fun to work with books, to receive a text and then design a cover to sell the book and to match the contents. His third passion is watercolour painting. He started quite late in life and had his debut in 1987 at a gallery in Kristinehamn, where he participated in an exhibition themed “Motorcycles in Art” together with John-E Franzén whom he had admired as a boy. Since then he has shown his watercolors of cars and motorcycles in many places and his audience is a mixture of motor enthusiasts and gallery visitors. He creates close-ups of details, motors, rust and stains thus creating portraits of vehicles. These vehicles in which their owners have lived, loved and cried are bearers of dreams, and when he paints cars with a past life he often imagines events that these cars might have experienced. He paints from his own photos, but it is important for him to have seen each car in real life. He has just been on a trip to Cuba with his wife, and with his own eyes seen many of the very old American cars driving around in the country. Now he is looking forward to painting a series of cars from Cuba.

Annette Bryne
by Live Sætre
Most of us have tried to take home stones and pebbles as secret treasures from the beach. Annette Bryne has taken them with her into her art production. She never grows tired of painting stones in all colours, sizes and shapes. Very accurately and naturalistically as she has learned to master after many years of practice – and recently also in a looser manner. Before painting stones she worked as a geological illustrator for Statoil, and she is also educated as a florist. Her early watercolours have flowers, grasses, butterflies, birds’ eggs and such as their motives. She previously worked as a designer at a pottery and before that she was an illustrator for the newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad. Annette Bryne was educated as a graphic designer but has later been accepted to all major Norwegian associations as an artist. Her watercolours always show stones in sunshine with sharp lines and shadows and she works from her own photos. Besides watercolours, she also creates acrylic paintings and lately she now experiments with screenprinting based on some of her watercolour sketches.

Summary by Marianne Gross