Birgitta SundstrÜm Jansdottir 1966 Born in Gävle, Sweden on 2 september 1966 and living and working in the Netherlands since 2001. After numerous courses in Sweden from sculptering art and pedagogy the choice was made, it would be painting and ceramics. "I know I was interested in the expression of the human face at the age of 4."
Through a variety of emotions and expressions, lines and patterns of the backgound, the portraits of Birgitta Sundstrom Jansdotter appear as central to any composition. The figures seem isolated and removed from their original context, as characters set to play their predefined roles recreating scenes of a predefined theatre. Making an obvious allusion to the movement of Pop-art, these portraits are taken away from images of the modern culture. Set at each time in different situations, the women looking down from the paintings make a distant referece to the modern way of publicity and advertisement through the use of the female icon, - idealized and beautified. Thereby, the familiar images of popular culture are being translated into the language of painting. But unlike pop art, mainly associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques, her images are carefully painted and the motifs of repetition are at each time given some new and exclusive traits. The intriguing and imperfect repetitions are either mirroring each other, either slightly differ from their original. While color adapts certain physicality allowing the figures to merge into the background and the background to contrast the figures. Through the means of this painterly reduction, Birgitta Sundstrom Jansdotter takes out the depth and profoundness of paint. However, through the hard-edged compositions, the collage of layers of paint, minimal pattern, and simplified shapes, the eyes gain the most prominent value. Centralized in the painting, they contrast the flatness of composition and seem to be mirroring the spectator. Often finding recourse in irony, she approaches subjects of popular culture and the sometimes banal and mundane elements of life. Missing her native country, she incorporate parts of the swedish landscape rendered by imagination and her memories.