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The Artist & The Painter
Kári Svensson - born 1954 - can be considered to be one of the more established faroese artists with a solid experience and recognition in his field. He sat up his first exhibition as a teenager, and since he has had exhibitions in Scandinavia, New York, the Baltic Countries, Holland and Singapore. At the age of 54 - Kári Svensson has many years in front of him as an artist.
Kari Svensson lives on The Faeroe Islands in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. He is inspired by the rough nature of his environment and his paintings are very expressive and describe the ever-changing weather throughout the year. The spectator cannot help but be drawn to these strong experiences, which the artist expresses in his work. The strength of his work is no doubt the subtle indication of fjords, mountains, people and villages.
Kári Svensson was in his thirties before he seriously started painting and the early paintings typically reveal influences of other Faroese artists like Ingálvur av Reyni and Zacharias Heinesen.
Kári Svensson has said that the Faroese nature represents an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and thus he does not oppose being referred to as a "landscape painter". But he is nonetheless not a landscape painter in the classical sense. Even though a few of the paintings have recognisable threads to figurative art, most of his paintings are abstract expressionism. Judging from the titles of the paintings, the basis is always a view of nature, but either perceived with such proximity or abstraction that it only leaves form, colour, and textural effect. This is emphasised by the generally predominant earth-colours in the early paintings, rendering an impression of weight and calm. Beneath the surface, though, is the smouldering of the primary colours.
In his paintings the landscape is continuously applied as a structure but there is a free utilisation of form and colour. The artist is now making paintings of interpretation of nature. The seen reality is no longer rendered in the paintings, but rather the artist's personal experiences, his interpretations. Like in the case of another self-taught artist, Per Kierkeby, traces are significant to Kári Svensson; however, they differ in the sense that Kierkeby's traces are a kind of historical segment in the painting, whereas to Kári Svensson, especially nature and the close predecessors are the traces.
Kári Svensson is not trying to shirk the tradition, but takes it along on his journey into the world of painting, where it forms the foundation for his desire to try new paths. He is by no means at the end of his painting; he is on his way, on his way...
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