Fragments of something are revealed through my body and I ask:
”What happened before? What comes after?”
My painting will not give me any answers. It says a few words, but not the entire sentence. It asks questions; cuts me off mid-sentence and raises its eyebrows. The question mark is enough in itself.
My process is intuitive and fluent. Images lead me and I follow.
I have a huge archive of photographs. That is where a painting usually starts for me. I choose pictures that make me curious; I browse through my albums and see a lot of them over and over again. Now and then they tell me something new – as if they have grown to feel safer around me and dare tell me a secret.
Sometimes my curiosity is raised by the colour, shape, or composition in a photo; sometimes it is because it teasingly hints at a story without a beginning or an end. But despite being captured by a picture, that is never enough. For me, it is raw information that I long to activate.
My work is figurative but not photographic – it never pretends to convey a truth. It is moving like a story that has been told in parts and shaped thereafter. The way I see it, painting speaks its own, it is a wordless language. What is being said therein cannot be translated directly into words, but it can be felt and interpreted by the beholder. That seduces me about art: the intangible storytelling, the searching for an alternative way to communicate. I paint quickly, like a thought just passing through – it is a meaningful part of my method. A certain pace is called for to be able to maintain a mood throughout every brushstroke of a painting.
Website
- @nikkifager
