That Vital Moment: Siri Kollandsrud

Siri Kollandsrud’s work sticks to the retina like tracks left by alternating spontaneity and reflection. One could call it controlled coincidence -a sort of poetics for her painting. Coincidence in the sense that the artist has no preconceived sketch of what she intends to achieve; she has no finished picture in her mind toward which she works, the painting comes into being as she goes along, also as a result of a series of coincidences. Or like a collection of notes which gradually link together to form a whole.

Controlled in the sense that, on the other hand, all that which crops up by coincidence is allowed to remain on the canvas. The decision-making processes lie in the painting as traces of a process. One could describe the painting process as perpetual negotiation and the painting itself as the book in which all the deeds are kept. A yellow stroke here to counterbalance a green one there. On her canvas, one color calls up the next. A garish yellow in a corner provokes the eye and is slowly given a comb for its unruly locks, as other colors are drummed up against it. Laver is applied upon laver; decisions are made then regretted, painted over and wiped off. And then suddenly, the picture is finished and there is nothing more to add. The finished work is in itself a history of the process.

In art-historic terms, Siri Kollandsrud’s painting has its roots in abstract expressionism. Even so, expressionism is not the right word, because what we have here is not an artist’s desire to express herself through her paintings, so much as an urge to examine the figurative language that can be expressed through the expressive gesture of artistic composition. Of course, the impulses emanate from within, from within the artist’s consciousness, her sense perception and subconsciously as impressions. The impulses, however, also emerge while she is actually working on a painting, as a sort of dialogue with the canvas, a dialogue that also has a capacity for humor.