This is one of those rare projects I did only for the pleasure
of doing it, with no client in the other end. I love fantasy
illustrations, but I think they often lack the kind of mood
and magic I loved as a kid and still do.
My ongoing goal is to make a painting that you want to be in
or moves you in some way...
you want to put on your boots and strap on your bag and
grab your walking stick and start walking towards the foggy
mountains in the distance.
I think I remember where it all started. Of course it somehow
started with reading The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit,
and all the beautiful Astrid Lindgreen books, but way earlier
my father sent me a postcard by the painter Sulamith Wulfing.
This picture triggered my
imagination in so many ways.
I made up several stories about
this little situation.
There's no doubt (for me) that
the painter here put a lot of heart
in it and believed in her characters
and the story she was telling.
Later in my life my father send me another letter.
It was a picture he'd painted on a piece of cardboard.
On the front, a knight dressed in armor with a sword hanging
from a belt, was walking through a forest towards a castle on a hill.
The back revealed a secret world with pixies and a king and a queen.
I guess I would've become a painter no matter what, but these two
letters from my father stands as giant influences and important
moments of my childhood.
Thank you.
