Sanger Fra Mor
Sanger Fra Mor (Songs From Mother) is a narrative, figurative project that reinvents memory. Evoking themes of maritime history, the culture of work, and time using selected images, symbols and repetition this project seeks to transform historic images and oral history into a visual essay. I draw upon my experiences both as a young boy aboard ship with my father, and as a member of the crew on a commercial tuna purse seine vessel. Further inspiration for my work is gained from summer trips to Monhegan Island, Maine where I paint in the open air and research the resources of the Monhegan Museum. In my work, the persistence of memory and the stages of life as well as the environmental crisis of our oceans are thematic subtexts.
See works
Songs for My Father
In 2002, I completed 1,000 works in my project, Songs for My Father, a body of landscape-inspired pieces in various media, dedicated to my late father, a Norwegian commercial tuna fisherman.  For this work, I painted the landscape, a long-standing Nordic subject, in and around Acadia National Park, Maine, during the 1980's, and have worked on Monhegan Island during the summers since 1995.  In winter 1999, while an artist-in-residence at Weir Farm, a national historic site administered by the National Park Service, in Wilton, CT, I began to explore the woodlands as a complement to the seacoast.  In 2001, I was a visiting artist at Weir Farm.

My interest in National Parks and the American landscape has several aspects. American landscape painting is a conversation of site as much as style, and painting where other artists have worked provides an opportunity to participate in this dialogue. Also, the National Park System and American landscape painting developed concurrently and have parallel and interdependent values such as the preservation of the natural environment and public accessibility.  Commemorating and examining this landscape through painted images contribute to the awareness of and appreciation for these values.
See works