Anna Nordenskiöld ENG

SWEDISH

ANNA NORDENSKIÖLD
THE PAINTINGS
UNTIL 27 FEBRUARY

Anna Nordenskiöld’s paintings have always been characterised by travelling, both in space and in time. In their forms, the paintings have varied between figurative and abstract, from internal to external, from large to small. However, there is a special sensibility that unites her entire body of works. She has a very light touch of brush. The paint is meticulously applied, shapes and tints emerge though many layers, as annual rings on a tree. They reflect experiences, memories, time and movements. Her paintings are quiet, nevertheless they are bursting with content.

In the paintings included in the show, now shown for the first time, abstractions become possibilities. The paintings act as windows where the restrictions of the stretchers provide a projection surface for the viewer’s dreams and memories. Anna Nordenskiöld grew up in the northern town of Åre, and the open spaces and skies of her childhood take form in her paintings. The vastness, the light and the air interact with lines and forms. Is it a sense of homesickness that the artist convey with her paintings? She might well be. Imbedded in the notion of homesickness lay both longing and sadness. But it might also be that Anna Nordenskiöld lets us realise that homesickness reminds us what is important to us, what we hold dear. In the city’s jumble of people from different places, where everyone carries their own longings and dreams, the works become even more relevant. The paintings let us travel, roam in our minds, reminisce and settle. They provide us with opportunities to move forward – gathering strength through the layers of annual rings.

Anna Nordenskiöld (born 1950 in Åre) lives and works in Stockholm. She trained as an artist at the Royal Institute of Art and at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, where she later worked as professor for many years. She has made a great number of solo and group exhibitions, in galleries and museums. Anna Nordenskiöld has received multiple scholarships from the Swedish Visual Arts Fund, and received first prize in the 2016 Swedish General Art Association award. She has been commissioned by the Public Art Agency of Sweden to produce public art for the district court of Värmland, Karlstad. Anna Nordenskiöld is represented in the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Malmö Art Museum, Gothenburg Art Museum, Norrköping Art Museum, Sundsvall Art Museum, Skövde Museum, Uppsala Art Museum, Gävle Art Museum, the County Museum of Jämtland, the Borås Art Association and others.