David Västerbo

Rushing water, fractals and branches that grow on themselves, repeat, create a pattern and a rhythm.

In my artistic process, I aim to bring forth a dreamlike image, blurry and unclear, yet extremely clear at certain points. Much like how, in a memory, you recall a specific movement, angle, or moment in time, but all context and surroundings are completely gone. Why is this particular image important? When everything nearby is so far away, it could just as well be a dream.

In my oil paintings, I use flowing paint and large brushstrokes to create a sketch, and then add details and contrasts. The subjects are often a person in the middle of an act, with a landscape from Lapland or Västerbotten. I see painting as an exploration, where I must try new techniques and ways of working to bring forth the image I want to present. What separates painting from drawing for me is mainly that drawing is very controlled, while painting is more fluid. This becomes especially clear in a large painting, where every detail and mistake becomes much more noticeable.

In my ink drawings, I spend hours adding dots to paper in various spiral shapes, repeating thousands of times with different densities and patterns to create different textures and values. The cover of spirals creates an image that constantly shifts focus depending on how close you stand. The process of drawing is as important to me as the final image, placing the dots in different forms becomes a meditation where I can completely disconnect from the world around me and focus on something else. That’s why it’s important for the dots to be in clear patterns, but with a certain distance between them, even in the denser areas.