I really never liked the spruce forest before I moved to Sørkedalen in 2010. Because I had no studio, I drew outside. It made me interested in how the landscape affects us and what it means for our sense of belonging.
I draw with ink and gouache on paper. Motifs that interest me can be the shapes of a fallen tree, shadows of branches that fall on the paper and how the colors are in the forest at night. How the weather, temperature and time can characterize a solid color surface in ink or gouache is also something I investigate in my work. These pictures are created in my absence.
Drawing is a tool for cognition and through the drawing my relationship with the forest and the river has changed. The boundaries between oneself and the landscape are experienced over time as more fluid. A mirror image I see in the river one night is somewhere inside me later and can describe something else I have no words for. Meanwhile, the river continues to flow.
On the occasion of the exhibition, an artist book is launched in which Schønning interprets Tarjei Vesaa's poems Snow and Spruce Forest with a selection of his winter drawings.
Janicke Schønning (b. 1974) is a graduate of Central St Martin's Fine Art (BA) in London and the Oslo Academy of the Arts, Arts (MA). She has previously exhibited at, among others, Lautom Contemporary, Galleri BoA and the Borealis Festival in Bergen. She lives and works in Sørkedalen in Oslo.
