Erlend Smidt Lysaker

I am a Norwegian artist living in Adelaide South Australia with my beautiful wife, whom I was so lucky to cross paths with almost immediately after I arrived here in September 2011. I have had a strong relationship with Australia since I first visited here on a Working-Holiday in 2006 and the country has greatly influenced my life and my art.
For me there has always been a close relationship between my inner journey and what my art expresses, and I can see how my art changes and develops in accordance to where I am at spiritually. In the recent years I have worked with an abstract form of painting, as if I was reaching for something that is beyond words and figurations, and in this period I have deepened through a practice of meditation and study of teachings from enlightened teachers.
I grew up on a farm in the south-east of Norway as the eldest of two brothers and I feel very connected to the countryside. Even though my father and my grandfather were both farmers it did not seem to be my destiny to become a farmer. I was to seek out a different life and already as a young boy I was very interested in drawing and it became obvious to me to study art as I grew older.
After I finished high-school where I was in the Visual Arts...

2008-2009 Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo
2004-2006 Strykejernet Artschool, Oslo
2000-2003 Arts, crafts and design, Nes Upper Secondary School, Arnes

2012 Exhibiting at Glenelg Art-Gallery, Adelaide
2011 Solo-exhibition Gallery LNM, Oslo
2009 Østlandsutstillingen, Akershus fylke
2009 LTD-exhibition, Bodø
2007 Group-exhibition, Nes Culture Centre Gallery
2007 Group-exhibition, LHL Clinic Feiring
2006 Solo-exhibition, Nes Culture Centre Gallery