Art born from a world of memories - An interview with Rune Christensen

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: Please tell us a little bit about your background and art.

My name is Rune Christensen. I am from Denmark, and I am currently based in a small town in mainland Jutland. And I'm sitting right now in a prison, well, what used to be a prison from 1850 and closed in2006 and now it's kind of a cultural institution here in Jutland where I live now. And this is where I was born. I was in Copenhagen for a while, and I spent a lot of time traveling around the world just living in a backpack for many years. I got into painting through, I think, graffiti. I found graffiti in the early 90s and practiced that for many years and then for some years I didn't do anything.  And something was missing, something creative, because I was used to you know graffiti kind of consumes your life for many years and then maybe three years of just being young and whatever that brings to your life. And I got bored, and I picked up a canvas and some house paint that I found in the basement and just started adding paint on there.  And many years later I'm here and so I guess that's kind of the short story of me getting into painting, the way that I'm doing now.  

In my practice, which sounds almost like a soft cliche, I'm very much interested in the world around me and I have always been very interested in the world around me. That's why I always love to move around and sit somewhere and observe and travel and be places that I didn't fully understand, and I think that's maybe a big part of what's in my work as well as other things that I don't fully understand.  Maybe it's always changing, right?  Because it's about where you are in life, where you go, what you just smelled, what music you were listening to in that moment and what's going on in your emotional life as well, it can be anything, right? And you can be working on a painting or a solo show or series of paintings that had a narrative and an idea from the get-go.  And then it changes because you listened to a Tom Waits song, or you met someone at a party, or you had a really nice meal or whatever it is, you know?  Those little things. So, I think that it's impossible to say that it's about this or that because it is changing all the time and sometimes when you revisit a painting that you did maybe a year ago, even just six months ago, you can change your mind and think maybe it's more about this now, you know what I mean? It is not like a static thing to me. But it is very much about what I observe and what I feel.  Memories and emotions and the things around me.  For many years my work was very driven by traveling in spirit inspiration. And I think now it's becoming more about what it means for me to be a dad, because that's the new thing for me.  Where I was very inspired by spirituality and the patterns and colours of India. And I think now because I'm in a small town, not in Copenhagen anymore I don't get the stimulation constantly in my face. It's very quiet and I think that in that way my work is becoming more reflective towards where I am in my life. I'm now a father of two girls, in a drastically changing world and what it means to be a man, what it means to be a girl and me raising girls and that is making me think a lot about what it means to be me and with my girls.

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: Right. It is as if your work has always reflected your experiences, but maybe in the past or something it was kind of more about the external experiences and now that you were living with family or almost like reflecting the internal.

Somehow, yes. But still, it's impossible not to be influenced by everything that you ever experienced. If you write something or make something, it's impossible that does not become a part of it. So, the last 40 years of my life are still in it.  But the subject matter might have changed a little.  I'm not one of those painters who responds directly to events, that may make a series of paintings in response toa crisis in Mexico for example.  Some people have a very specific way in what they're doing.  My friend just had a show in Paris, called "Paraphrases".  He was specific and had a clear intention from the start of where he wanted to finish. This is what it was about, you know, but for me, I'm never that type of painter.  My mind doesn't work on being one thing.  It's always scattered.  It's always a lot of thoughts.  It's always very busy and I think that is reflected in my paintings.  All the experiences that I had in my life are clearly in it but are not necessarily clear until the end.

I'm working on a solo show right now.  So, with that as an example, I think that I had an idea and then I started reflecting on what's taking up most of my time right now in my life and what is the most important thing.  For me, it’s raising my two girls, so I think although it’s not just about that, there's a lot of that in it.  So, yeah. To cut that short, it's all about what's around me.

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‍ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: OK.  And you mentioned graffiti and then how you picked up house paints and got into painting, but was there something specific that inspired you to become an artist or even inspired you to start graffiti?

Yes, for example with graffiti, when I was 13 years old, I picked up an interest in rap & hip-hop music from New York.   And then I started listening to KRS One and Wu Tang and all this stuff. And in some of those videos you started seeing all this graffiti and there was clearly graffiti around me. I was always wondering what that was, and I was very attracted to it because my entire life I was always drawing.  In my school books and in the bathrooms and things like that. But I didn't know what I was doing, I was just making whatever skulls and ninjas and stuff like that, you know? And then when I started digging into that, I was like whoa, this is really cool. I'm very interested in this. But clearly when you're from a smalltown.  There was no Internet, so, what do you do?  But then I was fortunate enough that I met a guy who was at a boarding school for kids that didn't really behave well.  

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We met up with a bunch of guys from Copenhagen there, graffiti was clearly already happening a lot there.  And he brought that back and he's like, “look at this, we're gonna paint graffiti.”  And I was like, “Yep, we are!”.

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And that's kind of what we did for many years and some of the guys that I grew up with painting, they took it to a different level and went all over Europe and painted trains everywhere and all that stuff and, yeah, it was fun.  And then, I think I always just had that need to somehow combine colours in some kind of composition. During that time, it was letters on a wall or on a train or wherever that was. And now it's what I'm looking at right now.  It's horses and flowers, you know.  But essentially, it's the same, right?  It's composition and colour, but now there is more of a narrative to my work.  There's not much of a narrative to graffiti. It's just me, me taking the space, myspace in the city.  But here, with my art, there are maybe a bit deeper thought to what I do.

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: I know you spoke about a lot of external influences, but do you think maybe your background being Danish and growing up in Denmark, how has that shaped your artistic practice?

Where I grew up, there were 2-3 heroes.  There's a local artist here in the town where I'm from. He's one of the most famous artists we have in Denmark.  I'm not too sure if he's very famous outside of Denmark. He's called Michael Kvium. When you grow up here, it's impossible not to relate to him.  Even if you don't care about art at all and you are a mechanic or whatever, you know him, you know his work.  It's impossible to not relate to it.  And then there were clearly two of my favourite graffiti artists growing up, which were my guiding points.  So, there was this kind of contemporary painting with very weird subject matter and then graffiti artists. So some where in between that I think I found my realm. I still use spray paint, but I'm also working with different subject matter than graffiti.  

But then you know at the start you begin realizing there’s some luck to it.  And clearly the Internet and Instagram and all these things give you a lot of information from all over the world.  Growing up here in Denmark, you go to museums, and you see all these artists and you realize there's so much more to it and, I still only know what, maybe 1% of all the art that's out there?  But I think that I really opened my mind to things, having moved to Copenhagen.  In my hometown there are a couple of galleries but it's not a big art scene at all. This is just a town of 100,000 people.  So, moving to Copenhagen I was able to go every Friday to openings and seeing solo shows with artists like Robert Nava or group shows and more, so you get exposed to a lot of different things and I think that that was great for me. Meeting a lot of artists and being part of that environment was part of my education because I didn’t go to art school, I just went through graffiti.  So, I come from something different. You know it's almost like ten years of colour practice.  I didn't get the history of art, but I got some of the materials and things like that.  I also grew up with my mom's brother, my uncle, he is an art collector and has a fair-sized collection with contemporary art.  Including art from many places, clearly a lot of Danish artists too, but that was where I was exposed to different things.  I was interested in understanding more about this world. I remember one time he brought home something like a pickle jar where there was a Barbie and Ken doll all beaten up, you know, like broken up and then stuffed in there and there was a lock on it and some kind of band around and it said something like for ever love or whatever, in a foreign language. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I do remember being like, “oh, this can be art?”.  So, that's when I was painting graffiti, and this somehow attracted me because this was weird and new.  My first reaction was what is it?  I need to know more.  So yeah, right then you can be excited, when you discover new things, that is when I realized that there are no rules.  

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And I think that that is the nicest thing about it. It's like there’s nothing you can't do. There might be some people that don't receive it well, but when you're working with the canvas and the paint.  It's up to you.

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Then what happens afterwards is a different and somehow more boring side of it.  You know, like the whole consumerism, the shows and whether people find this appealing.  But instead, it is about the interaction between you and the canvas, there are no rules and I think that's quite appealing too.  And what you focus more on it obviously.  Which is why I try to focus as little as possible for the outside people receiving the work.  But it's impossible to cut that away, at least for some artists.  I don't know, I can't tell.  But for me, I think it's impossible that I don't sometimes consider that there's going to be someone receiving this work.  I think that maybe when you gain a larger audience it becomes more freeing, right?  Because then, at least you have a base of people and you're always reaching new people, but if the audience is receptive, maybe you don't care about the exact responses.  I think it's difficult.  And I think especially with Instagram it is.  Sometimes I think about how many times I sat down to have a cup of coffee, but I end up grabbing my phone and scrolling through Instagram and thinking about things like, oh, that's cool, you know, I wish I could just stop.  But I think for a lot of people we are somehow addicted to it but that's also how we met and and how I met most people that I know now in the arts.  So, it's a good thing, but it's also, sometimes a bad thing.  But it's like anything in the world, it's something that's there. You need to somehow control it.  

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‍ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: And I don't think we fully learned that yet. I think everyone goes through the same thing. It's a love-hate relationship.

Yeah, it is. There is a lot of knowledge to gain from it.  There's a lot of community to gain from it.  There's a lot of new opportunities to gain from it, but there's also a lot of time to be wasted and there maybe is also a lot of questioning yourself, because I think that happens to most, most people that I know that the pain or work with any artistic form is that they see other people, they see other galleries and collections, whatever.  All the stuff that you're looking at, you're like, “I wish I was there”, or “why am I not doing better”.  So, it's a tricky field right now for a lot of people.  It opens up more opportunities clearly, which is amazing. And it has shaken up the gatekeepers a little bit, I think. So that's good.

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: And how has your artwork itself evolved or maybe even the creative practice and the way you create the art, how do you think that has evolved since you started?

I was very fortunate to share a studio with the artist that had spent time at the Jutland Art Academy, which is quite a good Academy and I think that that was what brought a lot of new materials to my awareness, and I also learned from seeing other people's paintings. When I go to shows, art fairs or wherever I see work, I find layering techniques very attractive. When people use lots of different materials in their paintings. And it's not just oil paint, I really like to see that.  The people that have a lot of different information in those paintings, both when it comes to the subject matter, but also just when it comes to the materials that they're using.  I love when you have oil and spray paint and pastels and collage, and you know like that you can almost like you see that you see them.  You see the painting for what it is, and I like the imagery, I like the palette, I like what's going on, I like the narrative. Then you move closer, and I notice all these layers and these brush strokes and then maybe “oh wow is this collage?  Oh man, this is really cool”, you know?

I love that you can dig into painting like that, and I think that that's what I'm trying to do with my work.  To add more materials into my paintings that makes them interesting, hopefully interesting from both a distance and up close.  So yeah, I think that that's where it's really changed for me. I think the last, maybe a couple of years here, I understand that that's what I want to do for now at least. Of course, that’s always changing.  

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: And what about those themes and the topics you choose? How do you come up with them and how do you select them?  And what are the themes that you're exploring right now?

Yeah, so, I started doing these paintings of horses, people on horses, and I had this idea first that it was about a Scandinavian approach to history of how it used to be that when you were painted on a horse, that was kind of like an indication of importance, like you had made it.  Also, I like the horse that you see often on a lot of my paintings as well as a lot of vases.  And it's those two things really that allowed human beings to evolve that fast, the vase or the vessel. When we created that, we were able to get water to drink water all the time since we could now bring water home, sit down and spend our time doing something different or store food.  It's the same with the horse, the horse allowed you to travel long distances, transport things, which made it easier to be a human being and explore the world.  There is a historical reference that I found very interesting and then I guess I started thinking about, why am I actually doing this?  And then I thought that it became more about how I see things, this is thought maybe it's more about what it means to see my girls grow up. And they have Canadian heritage.  For example, their mom is Canadian, and I'm looking at a painting right now where there’s a girl sitting on a horse in the prairies with the mountains in the background, it's a place that's located in Alberta where my wife's family is from and my kids have half of their heritage from. I first thought it was about something different, then it changed into this, but it still has the approach to the historical part, but also a European approach to how I was.  

I do a lot of what appears to be still life paintings, which is also an ancient, kind of historical, approach to painting.  Painting flowers has been done for hundreds of years and the same with the vases.  You go to a castle in Denmark, I think anywhere essentially in Europe you'll see nobles and princesses and Kings soldiers sitting on horses and being very proud.  So, that's part of the narrative.  But then that changed into a more personal approach to it.  I think it's changing.  So, I'm always drawing inspiration from art history as well.  But I like mythology as well.  A lot of my paintings have a lot of big fighting cats, snakes, fighting wild animals and things like that, which is to do with where I've travelled, especially in and around India and Nepal.  I think I draw from many different things.  It's kind of like fusion music, you know you just like a little bit of jazz, a little bit of rap over here and maybe some drums from Brazil and here we go. I think that and that's also to I think also goes with the large number of materials that I use.  I also use a lot of different materials.  I have a lot of different inspiration sources and lots of different music in my day and then lots of different narratives all in one.  I have an idea and it could change tomorrow and then the painting will change with it, you know? But right now, I'm going for this, this title and this image.

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ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: That is really interesting because you're talking about how your work is evolving, but it also sounds like the work and the topics you select, are just starting points, historical starting points, and then you're talking about your family so it almost sounds like the work is about you, how you fit into the world while reflecting on how civilisations changed over time?

 I think that's just how my brain works.  It has a lot of information constantly in it.  It's sometimes hard for me to find the right thoughts.  Like there are a lot of balls in the air and sometimes it's hard for me to know which one to catch. I just catch hold of a bunch of them. I'm like, oh, this is good, you know? And I think it comes mostly from spending most of my time alone in the studio.  For 8 hours a day I'm with myself.  I'm with either sound, books, podcasts or music from you know, Mali or wherever it is from that I'm listening.  And spoken word and constantly stimulating myself from different sources, so it's impossible for me to not take a lot of things in.  

So I think that that is why there is a lot of subject matter in the work.  Sometimes I can be influenced just through one conversation.  I can be at a show or have a conversation with you while I'm sitting and looking at these paintings, and I realize, maybe there's something more to it.  You know, because you can surprise yourself sometimes, sometimes you can make a bunch of paintings and you really like what you did. And then suddenly ask yourself, “what did I do here? Why did it end up here?” This is interesting. You know, I think some people, they write a lot and they have a lot of narratives and I do too. But sometimes this changes like I said.

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: And that's kind of how life happens, right? You're just kind of working around life and you don't know what's happening and then you kind of grab onto the best opportunities you see in front of you because you can't take all of them.

Yeah, exactly.  

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ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: I find that very interesting too.  How your work and the ideas behind it and even behind the way you create it, seem to reflect life. You mentioned the show that you're having a solo show.  What gallery is that with?

That's with Kristin Hjellegjer, a Norwegian Gallery, they have a space in London and Berlin as well.

She's located at London Bridge and Wadsworth, and Berlin and then she has a summer gallery in Norway and she's also opening one in Palm Beach at the end of the year. And I’ve worked with her for a year now.  My first solo show was with her last February in London.  So, that's what I'm doing.  That show with her in June.  So hopefully it will be good.  I'll make some paintings worthwhile looking at, of course.

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: I'm sure of it!  Do you have maybe some works from that show or maybe some other works that you're particularly proud of that you'd like to talk about specifically?

I have four works here that I've already done for the show.  I think just lately that I am excited about the direction that I'm moving in.  I'm excited about some of the new elements that I have that I am getting into my paintings.  And the materials as well.  I started using way more oil paint, which is very nice. I like seeing that there are areas of the painting, maybe a couple of square centimetres, but there's both spray paint oil, acrylics, oil pastel and that to me looks interesting.  

I have a painting here that I think the title of the painting could be the title of the show but that's pending, because I have to make like 10 more so who knows what's going to pop up.  But that one, I'm pretty excited about.  

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ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: Maybe tell us a bit about those elements that are new that you told us about, some of the things that the paintings feature and what they are about. 

Yes, it's called “Wildflowers”, which I think will be the title of the show.  The painting portrays a girl that's standing with her horse.  She just jumped off the horse and she is kind of standing and holding the horse which appears to be about to start moving with one leg up and she's kind of framed by this arch that you often see in ancient paintings.  But then there are flowers kind of growing up around her.  Very sensitive, painted in water colour and spray paint and then she's standing on the ground, carrying a box which is empty. Then there are flowers growing around her.  I think that this painting is to me. When I was kind of making it, I was thinking about what I was hoping to see my kids grow up like.  Being able to be strong, independent humans that were able to somehow take a break from it all and stop and observe and enjoy life.  What a wildflower means to me and to them, hopefully. Those little breaks in life.  Also, the place where they're from is called wild rose country.  So that's also part of the inspiration for this painting.  It's almost like cowboy country, everybody rides horses and there are lots of meadows where there are bears roaming around eating berries. Lots of wildflowers there.  So just picturing this, that's how I picture my children.  Hopefully, in tune with nature in some way.  It is kind of a sensitive pain somehow.  When I made it, I was surprised, this is most probably the most romantic painting that I've ever made. I even asked myself.  “Am I doing this now?”  

And that's what I mean.  Sometimes, you kind of let yourself make something. You think you kind of know what you're doing.  And then you realize, “whoa, how did I get here?”

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And I think that's where I started thinking about, how did I go from these paintings with multiple people in them and sort of hitting and big cats and trays of wine and drugs and all these things and end up here. And now I am making these very sensitive paintings.  I think that’s because of where I am in my life, but also, probably because I have a lot more peace and quiet around me, living in a small town.  And then just observing my children growing up and being like, oh, I have hopes for you.  So, it's very romantic and hopeful.  

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: It sounds beautiful.  Obviously hoping for a better world for your children, it must be uplifting and give you a new sense of optimism?

Yes, a better world, but also just the day they find themselves in it.  You know, I think that some of these paintings are about that.  I think that there is something very powerful about a horse. It's a very powerful creature that we've tamed and then made into our companion.  So, there is a lot about finding yourself and your place in the world in these paintings.

I have four months to make this show, so I haven't fully narrowed down like what this is, you know, like I can't be like it's 100% about this, completely, but I think this is what I'm working towards with this, with Wildflowers.  What wildflowers essentially mean to me, in the narrative of nature also.

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ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: So maybe tell me a bit about maybe your last big show or how another piece you mentioned the other pieces that were maybe a little bit more violent or graphic about beheadings and maybe some traces of alcohol and drugs. Can you compare and contrast that a little more or talk about one of those pieces?

Yeah, they're not violent in that way. They just have a lot more subject matter. There is just a lot more going on. So, for example some of them would have women or mostly people interacting with other people, carrying a tray of sometimes a severed head which is a reference to John the Baptist.  I had a religious approach. Not that I'm a religious person, but I like historical art references. You had the bosses with Tiger heads on or an actual tiger standing there.  You had Roman jugs of wine and often there would be some kind of drugs on there, which had to essentially do with life choices. They were about change in society. They were based on a title from David Bowie.  He said once, “tomorrow belongs to those who see it coming” and I think that I started working with that when we had that second wave of Covid here in Denmark.  It became a series of paintings of memories and expectations, and experiences. There were tons of people in the paintings. Some of them had like 50 people in one painting and cats and birds and weird little dogs with human faces. They became very mystical paintings about experiences that I've somehow gathered, you know, like how it's like overtime.  You know. If you've been traveling for a long time and you have a memory, but don't know where to place that memory because in the last year you were in 15 different countries with 15,000different people and suddenly, you met a boy called Jack in Peru. But then you realize that no that wasn't exactly what happened. These memories become very selective.  You can't figure out what's what or from where you know them. They say witnesses aren’t totally reliable because people don't know what they remember. They somehow create very fast memories that are somehow selective, you know? So, they become blurry.  You can't remember faces, but you remember shapes. That's me anyway.  And then all of a sudden, because you don't have a photograph in front of you, you just created a world that might not have existed.

And that is what the paintings became about, these faded memories of a lot of movement. Which again, kind of goes back to the historical theme, right? It's like a fusion of all these different cultures, and memories.  It's like being a human in a world, a lot of exposure.  Maybe not where I live now, but from traveling and living in different places.  Like when you live in London for example, or Copenhagen or New York, you are exposed to a lot of different things all the time and it's hard to remember where things were.  That is what I think sometimes anyways, that's how my brain works anyway.

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ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: That is fascinating.  And what about the general process of how you're creating paintings. What, what is your process from the beginning to the end? From coming up with the idea of a topic and then up to completion?

I think it often goes hand in hand.  I'm not sure what comes first because of how I work.  For example, this show will probably have somewhere between 15 and 20 works, different sizes, both paper and canvas.  I will start somewhere, and it could also be a painting that I had started a long time ago and I try to pick out something interesting.  I start from there.  I’m not sure if the narrative comes before the first brush stroke or the brush stroke comes before the narrative.  It could be both things.  And it could also change.  I'll work on pretty much all the paintings at the same time and try to finish them all within the same time.  That way they all get the same treatment.  After painting hundreds of paintings, it's impossible not to learn something new.  And often, I think for me anyways, I would be sad if I finished eighteen of my paintings completely, and then I discovered this new trick.  And wish I could have done that to all those paintings.  It becomes somewhat of a dance between those two things, like the narrative and the act of painting itself.

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: Have you ever thought about exploring other media?  Is that something that interests you at all, maybe like sculptures?

That is definitely something that interests me a lot.  I haven't yet dug into it.  But I did buy a bunch of clay that's kind of sitting and looking at me and there's another artist that's here in the same space as me that works with clay.  So, I'm thinking, should I start something? But it's also to do with how much time you have, right?  But sure, I really like the idea.  I also really like when I go to shows is when I can see an artist that's been able to draw from their paintings into the room and then creates a three-dimensional object to support those ideas.  It becomes a more wholesome show.  I find that quite interesting and very inspiring.  So yeah, definitely. I'm very interested in that at some point, it might happen.

For example, Ryan Schneider. I really loved him as a painter and I thought he did some awesome paintings and suddenly, these kinds of totem poles came out and you just like, holy crap, these are so good.  And now I can see he's like working with actual human structures, but I think it was just more of this 3-dimensionalcolor explosion in the middle of this room that I was very attracted to.  And sometimes you just see a painter that's able to do that and that's really cool.

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ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: I can see your work in 3D.  Hopefully we get to see that come to fruition.  

What do you think the most important skill that you have as a studio artist, has helped make you successful?

I think most of the people that made it really far.  Way further than me as well, have been very good at networking through this like new era of Instagram. I think that's a big part of that.  Meeting certain key people like Kristin Hjellergjerde has been really good for me. And that was through networking. You know, I was lucky enough to curate a small museum show here in Denmark.  I invited some artists that I liked, and I was interested in meeting and working with. Then one of the artists invited me to show that he was curating in Brussels.  And she was already working with Kristin. And Kristin saw the show clearly because he did the show and he's like, oh, I'd like to meet this artist. I was invited to a group show and now I'm at Kristin’s gallery. And that was through networking, you know?

There are so many good artists out there, it's unbelievable, you know, especially on Instagram, you get exposed to so many quality paintings and sculptures, so many high quality works out there and then sometimes somebody makes it really big and I wonder what they did.  You know, because why is that better than that one?  But sometimes it seems people hit the right button at the right time and that all the stars are aligned.  But I do think that the people that I know that made it big have also spent a lot of energy on networking. You have a good product but there's a lot of good products out there, you know.

But through doing things like getting exposure for your work, curating shows, bringing people in, then maybe, let's say out of these ten artists, one of those people would take them to another show that they curated. And then suddenly you built this momentum.  And then it begins to work.

And obviously our conversation as well, how that can be helpful reaching new avenues.  

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Instagram and networking have brought most of my opportunities of showing abroad.  Through this I’ve had the chance to show all the way in Korea and Mexico and Australia and that's just Instagram which is crazy essentially.  If you're an emerging artist or if you're an upcoming artist and you're not on Instagram, you're not doing everything you can.

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I know it sounds kind of stupid but that's essentially what it is.  And then maybe later you can stop it and say I'm off.  You see people that are making it big they don't need it because also stressful things come from it too.  But I think it's also a very important thing and even how we met, and we got to do this interview.  So, the more exposure you get, the more likely somebody will see you, you know and then you can be very fortunate that it happens very fast, or it can take a very long time. It can happen overnight, and some people take 20 years and for some people it's never. I think that that's also a big part of this that you need to understand is that many artists might never reach that goal.  And you need to be OK with that, right? And with everything in between, you need to have some fun. It can't be too stressful and too annoying, because then it's not worth it.  

I think every now and then you go into holes of darkness.  I don't know for other people, but for myself.  When I think the darkness creeps up on you, you need to have the tools ready to get out of it as fast as possible.  But I think it also depends on what kind of a mindset you have. Yeah, just like what kind of person you are, what you're struggling with. You know, there's people who think that making paintings has a different kind of brain function than a person who works in a bank.  And there are a lot of challenges in being an artist and. I think it doesn't matter what level you're on, you're always struggling.  I've talked to people that are, you know, like miles ahead of where I'm at. And I'm dreaming to even just get close to where they are. And I realize that they're struggling with the same thing because they're looking at somebody else or something that didn't happen for them.  It could be anything.  Maybe you get depressed during winter.  Maybe you didn't sell anything.  Maybe nobody invited you to that show. Maybe you can't make this painting work.  Whatever it is, that's your trigger that makes you fall into darkness, I think, it comes for most people every now and then.

That's where I need to understand, like, how do I get out of this?  And try to have a bag of tricks on how to get out of it. You know that could be both just with what you're doing not in your paintings, but outside of painting.  For example, one thing that I find to be very helpful for me is cold water exposure. Really weird thing.

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: A very Scandinavian solution, right?

Yeah, it is. But that's something that really helps me.  For some people it is going for a run. For some people it's meditating. For some people it's listening to music. Maybe somebody could paint themselves out of it. I think my biggest challenge is, is my brain just coping with that.

And I wonder sometimes, if I could get back to the feeling of when I first started painting, if you could remove all the shows, if you could remove all the money, all the collectors, all the noise, all that stuff, that's clearly very important, but certainly just noise to a certain extent. If you could remove that, what would you do?  If you just had all the materials in the world and a bunch of canvas.  What would you make?  That is a good question to ask yourself.

ARTCOLLECTORNEWS: Excellent.  Great advice, I think that isa good place to leave it.

Thank you, Rune!

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