Scan Magazine | Artist of the Month | Norway
Sammen (Poised), acrylic on canvas, 70x90 cm.
Artist of the Month, Norway
‘Sometimes I catch myself thinking, ‘I wish I was here’’ Norwegian artist Anne Kristin Hagesæther depicts the places she has been or passed by, to remind herself that she was really there. By Line Elise Svanevik | Photos: Anne Kristin Hagesæther
Hagesæther has a special relationship with the outdoors, despite not being the sort of person who grabs a backpack and goes hiking in the wild for days on end. However, all her life she has crossed the mountains, travelling from Oslo to Bergen to visit her family. “I am a sort of window-seat-on-the-train passenger, drawing my way through my 118 | Issue 112 | May 2018
travels. I often step off a train on a platform with a spectacular view and think, ‘I wish I was here’, which is peculiar because I am there in that moment,” she laughs. “In my painting and printmaking practices, I have made various pictures of mountains and snow. Recently, I have focused on the forestry landscape and
the peculiarities of the individual trees,” she says. “Some periods I work in an abstract way, and other periods in a more representational way.” Hagesæther finds that the most challenging aspect of her work is to embark on landscape pictures. “There are unlimited ways of interpreting Norwegian nature, and I wish to evoke both emotions and recognisability,” she says. “If I paint from a specific area like Dovre or Haukeli, and add a mountain that is not actually there – they will ‘catch’ me.