Location: Sweden
My interest in art started already when I was a child. I enjoyed drawing, painting and going to art museums and exhibitions. Turner, Dalí, Zorn and Monet were some of my inspirations. In my youth when I was a student in Japan, artists like Hokusai and Hiroshige caught my attention but after returning to Europe my focus shifted to European painters like Toulouse-Lautrec, Klimt, Magritte and Chagall, to name a few.
To say that I am an autodidact is not entirely true. Over the years I have known and worked with artists who helped me develop my skills, who inspired and encouraged me, from my art teacher at school, later artists when I lived in Japan and others when I decided to start my career.
I have worked in different directions; portraits, sea and lanscape paintings, birds, illustrating Japanese poems, mixing realism and abstract but more and more I paint after reflections in my mind and for some reason birds enter into most of my paintings.
Ten years ago I decided to abandon my career as a consultant physician to be able to work full time with art, a decision I haven't regretted for a second. I am based in the very south of Sweden and in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I have exhibited in South East Asia, Scandinavia, London and will exhibit in the New York Art Expo this year. I received the award for painting in the London Art Biennale in 2025.
Paintings
"Perhaps it will be,
that that todays troubles one day,
will be sweet memories.
What I used to call sorrows,
I now remember with joy."
Kiyosuke
For every step I take,
One less will remain,
Leaves already autumn red.
As water flows from the hills,
Untill the ocean it fills.
E.J.
My wife, a fan of the Dutch 17th century painter Vermeer, wanted me to paint her in the style of his "Girl with a Pearl Earring", a request I could not deny.
After a poem by Kobayashii Issa that he wrote after his infant daughter had died from smallpox. In spite of sufferings life has to go on.
"This world of dewdrops,
This fleeting world of dewdrops,
And yet…and yet."
“Comment on American Pop Art 1.”
When I was studying American Pop Art artists,** I decided to make a painted comment. After the initial painting here I made two more on the themes of "Eros" and "Filia".
The jacket with zipper and the tomato soup can with a Great tit are mine, the latter more photorealistic than Warhol's and the quotes I got from Dali although they apply to me as well.
**Roy Lichtenstein, Christopher Wool, Robert Indiana, Edward Ruscha, Kaw, Jeff Koon, Mark Rothko, Keith Haring.
“Regarde Gepetto, regarde! Une hirondelle”
"Look Gepetto, look! A swallow."
Pinocchio, absorbed in seeing a swallow, is blinded to everything else.
An improvised painting that started with a completely blue painted canvas with no idea where it would end but my imagination led me to this.
This portrait was made during a period when I was studying Klimt, hence I let myself be inspired by his ornamental style and the use of gold leafs but kept my personal touch. The angular and round shapes describes her personality and the dress I designed myself. She was very pleased with this portrait.
Adrian is my second son, here 14, just entering puberty. Done in acrylics with charcoal and graphite powder.
Before and during my student years in Tokyo I read some of Yukio Mishima's books and like many others I liked them. He was the most famous writer in Japan at that time, probably the most well-known person even outside the cultural world and popular in spite of his politically incorrect views, the reason why he never got the Nobel Prize he was nominated for three times.
His ritual suicide by "seppuku" or harakiri stunned not only me but also the Japanese. I had for some time decided to make his portrait, one that mainly the Japanese would understand. It took me a few more books, a biography and watching several interviews before the picture formed in my mind and I was ready to paint it.
His "death poem", copied from the original, and his last note found on his desk are included.
Death poem:
A storm blows in the night,
I want to be the first to fall,
to the world and to man,
ahead of time.
Falling is the only way to be a flower.
Desk note:
If life is limited I want to live forever
The mask is a Atsumori mask used in a Noh theatre drama.
The Eurasian Goldfinch is a symbol of resurrection.
The Spider lily a symbol of death.
The notes from the Bach song;
"Komm, süßer Tod, komm sel’ge Ruh! ......
Komm, führe mich in Friede,
“Sunrise hour in the archipelago.”
Made after a memory when sailing in the outer Stockholm archipelago in the summer, sun rising around 3 am, wind still absent and the pleasure boat people still sleeping. My favourite time when sailing or especially kayaking.
“Summer gale outside Sälskar lighthouse”
Memory from sailing in the Åland Archipelago, Baltic Sea. Two Arctic terns are included
After the Ingmar Bergman film "The 7th Seal"
The scene with the chess game between Death and the knight Antonius Block, just back after a crusade to the Holy Land, had been on my mind since youth. I worked as an camera assistant in my youth and wanted to be a film director but life took me in another direction. My interpretation is more hopeful, with the Eurasian Finch, a symbol of resurrection, showing that death never wins. I put myself in the place of the knight dressed in Samurai clothes.
Block: No man can live with death knowing everything's nothingness.
Death: Most people reflect neither on death nor nothingness.
A clear summer sky,
invisible waves moving,
on a tranquil sea.
So peaceful, still I worry,
suddenly it may disappeare.
Kumanoyama
When I contemplate,
thoughts penetrating inwards,
past the autumn shades.
Memories, how wage they are,
but come alive in the light.
Kumanoyama
“Perhaps”
“Steps”
“Woman with a golden earing”
“Dewdrops”
“Natalie”
“Adrien, 14 yrs”
“Mishima”
“Is it all Pointless”
“Snowy Owl”
“Summer sky”
“Spring”
“Memories”
