Some old finds from back home

Happy New Year everyone!
I went home to my family in Sweden for Christmas, and I haven't really realised before - but oh my they've got lots of my old paintings and sculptures up in their house! Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so I only snapped a few bad quality photos with my mobile phone. Here are a few of the things I made between 2003-2006. Nothing great, but it's fun to get reminded of them, and think back about the time when I made them.

This black rose with the barbed wire and the blood drop (I know, how dramatic!) was made during my college years, either in 2003 or 2004. It was simply my dark period, and I loved everything black. This painting was made with aquarelle (water colour) on normal paper.

One of the first things I made in ceramics class in college was this swirly vase made of red clay.

Vibrant colours - african women. Two tiny little aquarelle painting made on A5 paper, and mounted together in a big wooden frame. Made in 2004.

What can I say... feet. Imagine them sticking our from underneath a duvet. Acrylic painting from 2005.

A simple red rose with a drop of water that I painted for my lovely grandma in 2005. Nothing special about the painting, but it's very simple and it has got a lot of contrasts.

These two paintings are about opposite feelings, or something like that. "Dream, Fear" and "Light, Dark, Love, Hate". They were simply made on a rainy day when I had nothing better to do than to take out my acrylic paints, and doodle and splash on a couple of canvases. I must say, drenching the brush in red paint and splashing it on a pretty much finished painting was a surprisingly good feeling.

Abstract Art - Not just laziness

Many people think that abstract art is just an artist being lazy, throwing paint on a canvas. Sometimes that can be the case (I know, I have tried!), but usually there is actually a lot of thought behind the painting, even if it doesn't picture anything concrete.
The choice of colour, the movement in the picture, contrasts, shapes... a lot of different things play their part in abstract art. You might want to emphasize something in a room or simply draw attention to it, and you can help doing that by making a painting with certain shapes or colours.

Last year I lived in a big attic room with white painted walls, and I desperately needed some colour to make the room look a bit more interesting. That's when I painted this 3-piece painting above. I chose the colours cause they matched the other decorations in my room (when I hung up the painting, all my other decorations suddenly stood out a lot more), and the reason I made it on 3 canvases was to make it cover as much of the wall above my bed as possible. The bigger, the better, right?! ;) I also did it because I like the way the picture flows through the 3 canvases.

When I paint abstract art I actually prefer to divide the painting up on several canvases. It sure makes the painting look more interesting, and you get a wider variety and more options of what you can do.