Bare minimum

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Protecting nature, conserving, preserving, saving, rescuing, restoring, repairing… An obvious fact for some, an absurdity for others. I am one of those who care, but I remain skeptical about the reasons that push us to act. Or more precisely, I am convinced that we misunderstand the reasons for our actions, that we greatly underestimate the […]

Relic

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I look away from my paintings, from my exhibition. My eyes roam the room and glance over the stuffed animals of the “Vår Natur” (“Our Nature”) exhibition at the Natural History Museum of Stavanger. Among them, a wolf. But unlike the other animals here, this one doesn’t stand proudly. The taxidermists have not rendered the […]

Open circle

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« As soon as you see something,you already start to intellectualize it.As soon as you intellectualize something,it is no longer what you saw. » Shunryu SuzukiSeptember 8, 1967 As enigmatic and obscure this quote may seem, it is a very powerful description of the main predicament the drawer-from-observation is facing. He wants to paint his […]

Sad necessity

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« One death for one life, a fundamental principle of life on Earth. A sentence which can be delayed, which can give the illusion of being circumvented, but which, whatever form it takes, will always end up falling. It is the necessity imposed by a finite world, our planet, on which life has sought to fill […]

Vodka season

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It’s Christmas and New Year’s time, but I must admit that the most important date for me remains the Winter Solstice. It happens around December 21st, the date of entry into winter on our calendars, and corresponds to the shortest day and therefore the longest night of the year. From there, the days start to […]

At the doorstep

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“Identification is only the front door to naturalism and I have the feeling of having remained at the doorstep. All my life, I’ve made lists. I identified, bird after bird, by the hundreds, by the thousands, learning along the way some facts about their biology. But what do I really know about the life of […]

To the East

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I live inbetween two worlds. To the west, the coast. The plains open to the horizon, the beaches, the fields and the lakes which welcome a whole diversity of birds which are easily observed from the road. One searches with excitement for the unexpected rarity. To the east, the mountains. The forests that close the […]