Land
scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
LandEscape meets
Gordon Skalleberg Why do I paint faces and eyes, or sometimes only sections of a face? I guess I am trying to see beyond the surface. Subconsciously we can recognize joy and sadness, maybe even a subtle lie – but are we really aware of what we are seeing? Often, I paint from old photographs of people unknown to me. This facilitates freedom in my depictions because I am not trying to capture what I know about the individual, but rather what I see. Some of my paintings inspire the viewers to create their own stories, their own perspectives. This thrills me. A recent relocation to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with its desert landscapes and open skies, has inspired new imagery in a semi-abstract landscape-style that draws on the quintessential Southwestern features. My faces and landscapes are painted in oil on untreated plywood and other types of wood. The unique wood grains become a part of each painting – often in serendipitous ways. Every painting is truly a work in progress to the end - I never quite know what the colors, the material and the picture will communicate until I am done. The process and the result often surprise me, and I like to surprise the viewer as well. Imperfection is often found in my pictures – a crack in the plywood, trickles, scratches, roughness – and I welcome this aspect.
An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator landescape@europe.com
Hello Gordon and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would like to invite our readers to visit http://gordonskalleberg.com in order to get a comprehensive appreciation of your multifaceted artistic production. We will start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. A self-taught artist, you had been working for years in your family's company. What led you to shift to art and how did those years influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum due to the artistic
heritage in your family direct the trajectory of your current artistic direction? Some very good questions and, as such, very difficult to answer. Even though I grew up in a creative environment, art was never really a major focus. My parents were interested in good design and architecture. My mother took some painting classes and did paint for a number of years, but we never spent much time going to museums or galleries. My very talented father – an entrepreneur, inventor and mechanical designer – encouraged me to pursue photography. I found that I had an eye for artistic photography and perhaps that sparked a desire to do something more creative.