'INFERNO'

‘This image is one of my absolute favourites from your paintings! It seems to tell a complete story and its content raises many questions. 

Who is the writer? Who is the boy at the door watching? Are there reports of secret passions that the child’s father writes down? Or could the boy and the man be the same person? Is it possible for the artist to relate his own life in three dimensions? 

It is truly a representation that draws the viewer under its spell and points out the hidden parts, desires, and lusts in each person. I can barely take my eyes off this image.’ 

- Renate Kaufmann

‘I feel my eyes tearing up. 

what should I do with my eyes? 

what should I watch? 

- you ask what you should watch. 

I ask how I should live. 

it’s the same thing.’ 

- Pentru Ochi

‘Regarding his painting, Inferno, I interpreted it as a man sitting at his desk, writing his memoirs, remembering better, happier times in the past, and now feeling burdened by the responsibilities of family, etc. His son stands in the door behind him, looking at his dad and wishing he would play with him. My daughter’s interpretation is that the little boy is the man at the desk and is part of the memory.

- Gypsy

Your painting Inferno reminds me of a poem I wrote. Sometimes I draft poems to go with my own art, and looking at Inferno made me think of this one: 

Marshmallow Dream 

This is not a marshmallow 

dry and white 

pure 

powdered as dignitary wigs 

perched on heads of 

Mozart or Marie Antoinette 

plucked 

chosen one 

prepped for consumption 

lapped up as from tongues of 

innocent kittens 

false assumption 

of cloud or whipped cream 

spun cotton between 

suede thighs 

Rather this is 

some dark dream 

moist sticky lust 

pulled apart by thumbs 

and peering eyes

- Lara

Sometime in 1967, I first heard the song ‘Hey Joe’ on the radio. An icy cool distanced voice and a plastic, moving, guitar playing that did not resemble anything I had experienced before. Soon came a sequel, ‘The Wind Cries Mary.’ The artist turned out to be named Jimi Hendrix and was suddenly world famous. In 1970 he was just as suddenly gone. Died of an overdose, only 28 years old. Like a crackling firework that suddenly lights up a black night sky, and then just as suddenly dies away again. ‘Stars and stripes’ with machine gun mats and diving bombers... 

After Hendrix, nothing was the same; he had forever revolutionized guitar playing. Countless are the world stars who admired and were influenced by him. And when, for example, Bob Dylan heard Hendrix perform ‘All Along the Watchtower’, it was the only possible version, even though Dylan wrote the song himself. But imitating Jimi Hendrix is almost impossible. He was left-handed and played with the guitar turned in the ‘wrong’ direction, but he did not restring it, so the lowest string was at the bottom of the fretboard. This meant that his grip technique became completely different from other guitarists. 

Even though Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, he left his mark on the entire 70s, and in terms of stage performance as well. Towards the end, he displayed a destructive move, burning up and smashing guitars. But at the same time, his late contacts with Miles Davis show that he may have been on his way to jazz music. 

Hendrix performed several times in Sweden. I was at that time strictly a busy grandfather with a full-time teaching job in Aspudden. But several of my students went to his concerts, and one of them also had to borrow one of the school’s film cameras to secretly film. Had the camera been of better quality, that film could have drawn in half a fortune later ... 

My portrait of Jimi Hendrix was the first of my ‘magic portraits’. Inspired by Dali’s painting Mae West, by Lena Svedberg’s chaotic drawings, and by Francis Bacon’s wounded, distorted portrait, I began to draw a pencil sketch. This was during my years as a teacher. The school was in an area with major social problems, drugs, alcohol abuse, fragmented homes. I still found that in the calmer classes, the best pedagogical method was to sit and work in the middle of the students. 

When the sketch was finished, I started working at home with a large oil, 150 cm high. I worked on the painting for four years. It was then shown at Liljevalch’s spring salon in Stockholm that year, together with a painting of the punk ‘Sivan’ in the subway centre, and one of my still-lifes with a withered bouquet of flowers. My paintings attracted a lot of attention and were portrayed and commented on in both the press and on Swedish television.