Håkon Søreide

From Bergen, Norway, Håkon Søreide is a self-taught artist in many media; a painter, a photographer, a poet, occasionally musician and philosopher. And all just for fun. It was first his sudden and enlightening discovery that he could paint Christmas 1999 that plunged him headlong into the creative life that he now leads. Even though he had started writing poetry much earlier, in 1993, it was through painting that he felt he had found his clearest voice.

Artist's Statement

For me, art has become a fascinating journey of discovery, a voyage across unchartered seas towards the mysterious and mythical continent of limitless self-expression. As with so many other things, it's not the goal, but the anticipation of it - the journey itself - that makes it worthwhile.

To be able to express something to the full one day, effortlessly, and through any chosen medium, would take away the enchantment it is to learn how to get there. The tension between the limitations and possibilities, even visibly displaying human imperfection, is one of the things that make art interesting. Furthermore, art should never cease to surprise even the artist, and a finished work should include both deliberate, spontaneous and random elements. Only thus can it become something beyond what it was possibe to imagine when you started creating it.

There are probably more definitions of art than there are artists. In modern aesthetics. many would say it is up to each person to define what constitutes art for them, effectively also leaving it up to the artist to display something and call it art. Whether something is good art or bad art is another matter entirely.

As for me, I usually define good art as something that is "interesting". There must be something about it beyond the ordinary that makes you keep your eyes on it long enough that you no longer just relate to it neutrally: Unanswered questions; a sense of wonder; form, colour and composition to catch the passing glance and make it linger.

When art succeeds as art, there is communication between the work and whoever experiences it, and you see not only the work, but something of yourself in it. Sometimes the enjoyment of an artistic work comes through analysis and an intellectual processing of meaning, sometimes it is immediate and inscrutably emotional. In both cases communication is its soul and substance.

All art exists in a strange vacuum; all media of expression, whether it be words, dance, or oil paints, offer limitations and possibilities on what can readily be expressed. All art does - in essence - make the spectators focus on these limitations, creating awareness of them, and thus making it possible to step beyond them. This awareness can in effect close the gap between what can be expressed and what cannot.