When I create my images, I wonder what the result might be this time. In my life as a visual artist, I have tried different directions such as printmaking, sculpture, and painting.

Since I was not satisfied with painting on canvas, I experimented by pasting newspaper onto the surface, seeking texture, showing both text and overlapping fragments of paper.

For the past twenty-five years or so, I have been using old wood as the background for my monthly works.

The wood often carries a texture that awakens associations and ideas, while also offering resistance.

My motifs come from Norway’s forests, waters, and rivers. I often write something on the back of the picture—it may relate to the image itself, or to something entirely different.

I am often part of the picture: by a fire, or wandering among the trees of the forest, searching for that quiet space. By the flames I experience a strange fascination—in their light I meet prehistory, and the distance between then and now dissolves.

Nature’s infinity reminds me that my life here is but a faint breath, scarcely that. What lingers in me is a feeling of melancholy. Perhaps I am trying to recreate what has been lost; perhaps I have sought my way back through printmaking, sculpture, and above all, through my images on wood.

I work the wood with different tools, in various ways—often using instruments I once applied in printmaking and sculpture.

It brings me great joy. Much that is new meets me in the process. I finish or begin with acrylics, which dry away, and at times I have even used tar on the wood. I make my images as I see fit, without thinking of what my colleagues have done—though I have drawn inspiration from other artists.

I work with shades of gray, white and black; ochre and rust also belong to my palette. With these, I seek to recreate impressions of Norway’s forests.

My aim is for the images to resonate with nature, as my senses have captured its impressions.

— Morten Magnus 

About the Artist