Transience by Karl Wennergren

“Through the act of painting, I often try to make sense of things for myself. This could be something I have seen or felt when visiting a place, or something accumulated over a longer period of time. So, I use painting as a method of pondering these things, slowly adding my thoughts to the canvas with every stroke of the brush, until the assemblage forms the finished painting. Despite this, I do not think I could accurately describe in writing what a painting is about. I am not sure whether I fully know myself, since I never hold the whole thing in my mind at once, but only shards, placing them on the canvas, one at a time, until the puzzle seems complete. So then, like any viewer, I am left to discover whatever that is by observing the painting in the end. Furthermore, the painting speaks its own language of paint, and I could hardly translate it very well. So, although I will leave the meaning of the painting to the viewer, I can relate what made me interested in painting it in the first place.

“I often go out sketching to gather ideas and experiences for future paintings. This time, not far from my hometown in the south of Sweden, I found myself drawn to a field at the side of the road. There was something strange about this field. I got the feeling that something significant had taken place there with no one to bear witness, and now it was lost. The possibility of a memory slipped out of time. All that remained now was a plastic bag.” – Karl Wennergren