"Hot Spring I" Painting

Nature is the starting point for my painting. Rather than depicting a particular landscape, I translate remembered impressions into colour, light and texture. What draws me back to an experience may be a shifting reflection, the density of vegetation or the way light transforms a surface. I paint what remains in my memory, allowing these impressions to take on an abstract form.

The landscape becomes an archive of sensations. Some return clearly; others emerge through the act of painting. My work develops between conscious decisions and intuitive responses. I need to guide the image while remaining open to what happens on the canvas. This balance between control and surrender is central to my practice: a painting can take an unexpected direction, asking me to reconsider what I thought it would become.

In the studio, I explore how colours change through their relationships. A yellow may grow luminous against blue, while a dark passage can give depth to a lighter surface. I build my oil paintings from the underlying layers forward, often applying thick paint with a spatula. Earlier colours remain partly visible, creating light and tension beneath the surface. Each new layer changes the whole.

This gradual accumulation gives the paintings their tactile presence. The surface holds traces of decisions, adjustments and discoveries. I am interested in how the physical weight of paint can coexist with a sense of light and movement—how a dense, worked surface can seem to open into space.

The experience of a painting also changes with the person looking at it. Each viewer brings memories, associations and a particular state of mind. A passage that recalls water for one person may suggest foliage, weather or something less tangible to another. I want to leave room for these encounters without fixing the image to a single interpretation.

Through painting, I seek a form of communication that reaches beyond what I can fully explain in words. I hope the work offers pleasure while holding a slight unease: something unresolved that draws the viewer back. I want the paintings to invite sustained attention, allowing new associations to emerge over time.

Pia Andersen, October 2026