Blue on Blue 2014 Acrylics on Canvas 60cm x 80cm

The essentials of a painting remains an array of colours assembled on a surface in accordance to the impulses that leads the artist at the time of creating the piece. Here I wanted to spend some time on blue, and to arrange a group of other colours that would interact with blue in a powerful yet deadpan manner. I looked for strength and calm at the same time. Rather than mechanical ways of dividing the colours into different areas I wanted to piece it all together slowly. Something in this process remains visible on the surface after the paint has dried.

Linkage III 2014 Mixed media on canvas 50cm x 50cm

Reading the surface of a painting is often a dual process. There is the movement from let to right akin to the page of a book, and its opposite, the head on stare. One process leads into another. A time element comes into this continuous shift of view and can add a level of energy to what essentially is an inanimate, flat surface.

Linkage II, 2014 Mixed Media on Canvas 40cm x 40cm

In communication there are grades of urgency. Colour communicates its own narrative to the viewer. In sound as well as light we deal with vibration, and varying speed of said vibration. Our experience engage with matter, energy and time. As we view the inanimate flat surface of colour we ascribe to it an element of time and it seems to communicate to us a rhythm and frequently movement too. Sometimes the lack of complex narrative can help us get an idea of subtler, but no less compelling narratives. A lack of noise can make us listen harder.

Linkage, Mixed Media on Canvas, 2014 50cm x 50cm

Linkage or connection of parts build the fabric in matter as well as thought processes. The fabric gains its nature by the proximity of its parts. As with everything that is there is also its opposite, that which is not. This lies beyond. Paradoxically this area is a pre-requisite for the fabric itself.

Magma One. Mixed Media on Canvas, April 2014 90cm x 60cm

The power inherent in colour alone is a marvellous thing. The possibilities of the different combinations available and the effects judicious placement can achieve can both please, delight and confuse the creator of any artwork. Mixing colours and dynamic shapes is both stimulating and educational. Unmixed colours and the absence of expressive shapes can have no less of a stimulating effect on the eye. The less I manipulate the colour on the canvas, the more I feel I get to "know" the colour itself. In this work I wanted the surface to host a plain, straightforward display of a balanced yet pulsating group of colours. Despite its formal rigidity I wanted the combination to allude to natural hidden strength.  

Interview with the artist, courtesy of www.thepalettepages.com

Thanks to the great people on www.thepalettepages.com, an online directory promoting art from across the globe engaging artists and art-lovers alike in discussing, networking and sharing ideas about art, I was given the chance to elaborate on my ideas on painting and painters from the past I admire.

Read the full interview here:

http://www.thepalettepages.com/2014/04/03/martin-olsson-interview/

Quiet. State, March 2014 Mixed Media on Canvas 80cm x 100cm

The absence of immediate force has many different results. The freedom this leaves to the beholder has both positive and negative implications. We want to be seduced, but not bullied. We want to be in control, but not have to do everything ourselves, as fellow humans and viewers of art, even. I wanted to stay awhile in the middle ground of action, and experience the special note of potential this offered. A polite declination to join the circus, or indeed the brawl on the picture plane. A tight-lipped stance on canvas.