Your solo exhibition, Waste Land, is currently on view at Brigade. How would you describe the direction for this body of work?

There are multiple directions, or parallel tracks; Inner landscapes (larger abstract works), and a series of smaller studies or still lifes, which I call Positions. The idea is to gather everything under one roof - as a single, cohesive project.

Your practice has moved from a primarily abstract visual language to now also incorporate silhouettes and outlines of objects. What initiated this shift, and how has it changed your approach to painting?

The figurative side of my practice has always coexisted alongside the abstract projects. The difference is that I am now opening up and allowing this aspect of my artistic practice to be seen. It can feel somewhat more exposing to show figurative works, and it is something I had to build up the courage to exhibit.

There is also a dilemma in how figuration very easily can create a narrative in relation to the abstract works, in much the same way as language does. The project is perhaps to break down the hierarchies between these two poles, in order to find some kind of core that reveals them to be part of the same project. For me, the motifs in the still lifes are not what matters most, rather, it is the painterly work itself. As well as in the abstract paintings.

You have often described your paintings as rhythms. How do these rhythms manifest in your process - visually, physically, and perhaps emotionally?

The rhythm is the kids waking me up at night.
It is the breakfast, and the egg that rolls off the kitchen table and crashes onto the floor among crumbs and dust.
It is the teapot.
It is the drop-offs at daycare and products on the shelves in the supermarket.
It is the small events on the way to the studio and everything I carry with me through the door.
And then there is the rhythm of the brushstrokes, some kind of muscle memory, instinct, emotions.
The rhythm in the meeting of colors.
Liquids that melt into one another, the balance between chaos and control.
Just like in life.

The materials you work with possess specific physical qualities. To what extent do these qualities shape the ideas behind the works? Do you find that you respond to the medium, or do you try to push it in new directions?

I feel a responsibility as a visual artist to push and develop the field I work within. At the same time, I have a personal need to keep my process open and playful. My interest in painting as a medium is also an interest in materiality, in different structures and surfaces. The sensuous is a language I think in, a form of poetry, where I have to search for the right words.

Veiling and unveiling seem to be central elements in the composition of the new works. Can you elaborate on this dynamic?

That is well observed and absolutely central. In many ways, it is an attempt to dissolve the narrative within the still lifes. The Positions series consists of the positioning of relatively simplified still lifes, forms, and color schemes. Some are more distinct than others. Some are pigment-heavy and opaque, others are cast into wax, creating a misty, transparent layer. This creates a kind of displacement of the surface - sort of membrane or skin.

I also believe that the work, in many ways, emerges in the encounter with the spectator, depending on how much veiling or unveiling each individual perceives or projects into it. It could be two oranges, or a composition of two cadmium orange circles. Similarly, the viewer is central in the larger abstract paintings, appearing as a figure within an inner landscape.

Do you see this new body of work as a further development of your practice, or as a distinct break from your previous work?

I see my artistic practice as something that unfolds in spirals rather than moving in a straight line. When I think I have come up with a new idea or new approach to the painting, I usually found that I have had the same idea years earlier in the form of a sketch or a note. But thankfully, it feels as though the wheel keeps rolling forward, gathering new elements and impulses, like some kind of tumbleweed. Whether this means a distinct break or not is not really for me to say :)