Child's Gaze | Konstnärshuset Svavel | Konstnärshuset Svavel

The places of our childhood create an inner landscape—fragments of light, terrain, and feeling that stay vividly alive. My own inner world is rooted in Huskvarna, where I lived my first eighteen years. Its hilly terrain, carved with ravines, slopes, and streams, and the particular quality of its shifting daylight, carries a profound presence for me. This exhibition, through new paintings, uses that landscape to investigate how a childhood way of seeing can persist—a quiet counterbalance to today’s noise and jaded gaze.

The motifs develop intuitively, as memories, my own and found photographs, and other sources blend until the essential mood crystallizes. Each painting becomes a space where document and imagination intermingle, giving form to new narratives.

This approach allows me to grasp at the intangible: inner visions, bodily memories, and fleeting atmospheres. I apply acrylic paint in thin, transparent layers, much like watercolor. By seldom using white, the pigments retain a distinctive luminosity.

The paint has its own agency. It flows, bleeds, and leaves its mark. My role is to be present, to listen, and to avoid over-controlling. At times, a single detail—a gesture, a transition—can transform everything, and the painting finds its own voice.