Sohlberg
Harald Sohlberg is another of that generation of remarkable Norwegian painters working at the turn of the last century. As with many of his peers, there is that tension between outside and inside. Landscape, terrifying and beautiful in its vastness, is framed by domestic perspectives.
The vast and sublime...
Are framed and contained by human perspective
Decks, windows and country gates frame our view: we can inhabit these landscapes.
There are a couple of places in Norway that figure prominently in his visual imagination. One is Rondane, a mountainous region in central Norway, with 10 (rather forbidding) peaks:
The transformation: A photograph, and a painting:
Another place that seems to have haunted Sohlberg in the most fecund of ways is Roros, an old mining town on the Swedish border:
Color against the white of land and the gray of sky: I can see why Sohlberg painted the village, again and again.
Sunset and shadows transform landscape, as well.
Tree and sun make shadow-hieroglyphs
As do the variances of media:
It's difficult to inhabit the sublime, but Sohlberg makes it possible.
Two more views of Rondane. I should like to inhabit such a place, for a while, to see how such perspectives might shape my psyche.