Apparently Lars Lerin’s interest in painting nature, mentioned in the printed material displayed around the American Swedish Institute during his recent show, focuses largely on stuffed animals. The photo below shows one part of a much larger work painted from photographs taken at the Natural History Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden. Lerin has painted the stuffed birds inside the glass case and the case itself showing the background behind the photographer reflected in the glass, a multi-layered world.
We went back to see Lerin’s paintings for a second week in a row, partially because I watched the interview on the ASI website with the show’s curator Bera Nordahl from the Nordic Watercolor Museum. During the interview, Nordahl mentions the fact that Lerin’s chair paintings are portraits. Personal and relationship characteristics can be read in the style, wear, the distance between the chairs, and directional placement. When I looked at the my own photographs of the chairs, I discovered Jim, the windows and exit sign in the room, and the reflection of part of the museum’s written material about the artist included in my own photo. I think I’ll try to paint Lerin’s chairs in his manner.
“I want to learn what I’m seeing.” Lars Lerin
This is a similar sentiment one hears from other creative artists, for example, MC Escher, Einstein, and Niels Strobek.
Art - As I See It 