English Summary 3-2008

Torsten Jurell
By Jacqueline Stare
Torsten Jurell has worked fulltime as an artist for more than thirty years. His works often have a historic/literary or current political connection but that is just one side of his work. He is a deeply committed artist but he is just as much filled with pleasure in creating beauty and he gets happy when faced with a beautiful sensual form. A picture where colours harmonize and a content that speaks about joy and warmth. He plays over a broad spectrum and his boundless curiosity, coupled with pleasure in his work, is perhaps the most important propelling force.No material, neither wood, metal, watercolour, oil nor any graphic technique, is of preference to Torsten Jurell, just as little as he sticks to a limited circle of motifs. The motifs are the ones that choose material and through the materials he searches into forms and colours, through the materials his works get the expression that he seeks.

Helen Skinner & Anna Catellani – Restorers help us to preserve our cultural heritage
By Jacqueline Stare
Abroad it is very common that the auction rooms and the buyers are in contact with various restorers. Here in Sweden they do not have the same role, which the paper restorer Helen Skinner as well as the painting restorer Anna Catellani regret. They love their work and want us in the world around to understand what an important task we have in our time to take care of our works of art of different kinds. Much can sometimes be made just by reframing a work on paper and by paying attention to how a painting is hanging in the room in relation to windows and sources of heat. That can play a big role for the preservation of a work of art. And that is why advisory/consulting service is a very important part of the work of the two restorers.

Nils Sloth
By Peter V Nielsen
Nils Sloth has drawn since he was a child. He attented the Line of Drawing and Graphic Arts at the School of Utility Art in Copenhagen. To draw, i.e., the line or the stroke, has to Nils Sloth been a fundamental element in all his art. The strokes capture the animals in the zoo, the movemens of the model, and the line is marked in the artist´s painting and adornment tasks. Nils Sloth tells that he is not eager to sell these basic drawings and watercolours. They are the foundation of all his daily work from painting, prints, illustrations to sculptures.

Sigtryggur Bjarni Baldvinsson
By JKB Ransu
Sigtryggur Bjarni Baldvinsson was born in Akureyri, on the northern coast of Iceland, in 1966. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Reykjavik 1987-1990 and from there his path led to Ecole des Art Decoratifs in Strasbourg, France, where he studied for three years. S.B. Baldvinsson is not the sort of painter who carries his easel up a mountain or down to the seashore where he can immerse his brushes into the myth of romanticism. He rather takes his Leica digilux 3 camera to his destination of choice, shoots loads of photographs which he then downloads into a computer program where he edits them, changing colours and forms until he is satisfied enough to project that result onto an empty canvas or paper.

Ingegerd Möller
By Jacqueline Stare
Ingegerd Möller grew up in Lapland, northern Sweden. She is noted not least for her watercolours. She paints them during travels, i.a., on the west coast and in the northern part of Sweden. Small, close sections of nature with succulent green moss, gleaming pink west-coast rocks, intensely red grouse brushwood, dry twigs and leaves, small soft short-stemmed flowers of different kinds. Nothing is too small or unpretentious to her brush. Several of these watercolours can be found in her various books and also in the form of litographs. Nature is always the prime source of inspiration. Sometimes she lets a single figure, most often a girl or a young woman, into her pictures, besides two men. They are her perhaps foremost human sources of inspiration, appearing in different techniques: Albrecht Dürer and Carl von Linné.

Ole Kristen Solberg
By Jacqueline Stare
Ole Kristen Solberg was born in the Löten district in Norway. He studied at the National Art Academy and thereafter he attended an agricultural school and became an agronomist as he was supposed to take over the family farm. Lately, Ole Kristen Solberg has devoted himself to painting watercolours. Watercolour was to him for many years, as to so many other artists, a technique for sketches, practical to handle when he was outdoors at home and on trips. Now he has a different view of the watercolour painting.

The dilemma of the mixer
By Johan Lamm
To be able to paint with watercolours, the pigments must be mixed with serveral other materials. A colour mixture, that is ready for painting, thus contains pigments, solvents, fixing agents and various added ingredients. To mix these the acquarellist must have at his/her disposal a suitable vessel, which can be of different kinds and materials.