ANNELENE HAFTORN
In Memoriam. Acrylic, charcoal and wool on canvas. 155x180 cm.
The biggest mystery in life is, -life. My life on an ancestral sheepfarm in the norwegian countryside has left deep traces to all my work. Life and death is an everyday realistic and close experience. Seasons changes, hand in hand with life and death. Animals are born to be slaughtered to feed humans (or preditors..), seed becomes plants to be cut down or decayed, generation follows generation in all context in which life is present. This is, hopefully, a perpetual process that creates the history and giving impulses for artistic ideas. I feel history is pushing on me to open our eyes of todays living and were it is leading us away. I try to visualize a dialogue between past and present, the rural and the urban. Often by reworking images. Fragments of ancient calligraphy and photos put together with sceneries from my own surroundings, -like trees, animals or landscapes, the uneven rhythm and cycles. Pieces that binds time together and leads on the inheritance in a new coat, revealing a faded archive of previous life. Looking back through past history and stories told to describe the present time and taking a considered look at the future. Seen through a perspective of time, place, communication and relations, the pieces sets us looking for traces and identity and a need to belong.
In an attempt to express all this I use various techniques. Acrylic and oil, aqua pencil and image transfer on canvas or mdf, as well as charcoal drawing and woodcuts.
In an attempt to express all this I use various techniques. Acrylic and oil, aqua pencil and image transfer on canvas or mdf, as well as charcoal drawing and woodcuts.
