Till Dig – som spindeltrådar och änglavingar, 2025

Title: Till Dig – som spindeltrådar och änglavingar, 2025

In Skellefteå's city space, there are 15 miniature paintings measuring 20x20 cm. The works are loosely linked to Torgny Lindgren's books: Merab's Beauty (1983), Bat Seba (1984), Ljuset (1987), Hummelhonung (1995), Pölsan (2002), Doré's Bible (2005), Norrlands akvavit (2007), Minnen (201K4lingsor).

Technique: Painting 20x20 cm
Location: Bleachers by the river
Art consultant: Anna Karin Larsson

A constantly ongoing project in my artistic career is the Container Paintings (approx. 20x20cm), painted directly on freight containers set up at freight terminals. The containers are shipped around the world beyond my control and I like to imagine someone, out with their dog, in Frankfurt or Hoting, suddenly jumping in front of my painting. The idea of the works is precisely that they suddenly and unexpectedly appear. The idea is the very lack of title and price tag. Coming across the works is like meeting a stranger on the street, being addressed and perhaps allowing curiosity to sprout, without knowing the professional title, other status markers or hierarchical position in networks that could be significant for one's possible interest.

In the summer of 2025, I will add 15 works, paintings in the format 20x20 cm in as many places around Skellefteå. In Skellefteå, however, there will be a context and the works have been given a collective name. The 15 works are called: "To you", with the subtitle: "- like spider threads and angel wings".

2025-04-15
I have always wanted to make a cover for a novel by Torgny Lindgren. I even wrote it to him once. In response, I received a letter that made me very happy and which I still have. It never became a book cover and my letter is now (somewhat embarrassingly) in the archives of Umeå University Library – in one of those boxes with material submitted by Stina Lindgren, Torgny Lindgren's wife, after his death.

Thinking that I now have the opportunity to paint fictional covers for some of his books in places around Skellefteå – the city of storytellers. And looking for some diary entries from 2020.

2020-04-05
In the short story 'The Book of Revelation' by Torgny Lindgren, he has the boy with lung disease, the self of the short story, explain to the grieving mother how happy he is to be alive. She worries about having brought him into the world when his life had become so miserable and worthless: "It was horrible that someone would have to be born into the world only to be snatched away almost immediately like this. She wanted me to forgive her for giving birth to me. And from within the slight intoxication of the lack of oxygen I said: I think life is wonderful." And the boy continues later to argue for life: "Down by the gate towards the milk table I have a large, flat stone. On it I collect gravel and pebbles and pine cones and then I build large cities. It is so wonderful and magnificent to be alive. I believe that life has a meaning.” The boy with pneumonia in a fictional Torgny Lindgren world, just like me as a 7-year-old, had a flat stone where we staged our respective fantasies. Like spiderwebs of kinship that stretch across time and space. Everywhere reflections, connections and connections, as if everything in existence is echoes, patterns, structure, form.

That in turn made me pick up Imre Kertész, The Man Without Destiny and read the last paragraph of the seventh chapter, which radiates the same feeling of grace and gratitude for the miracle of life. Right there, everything is condensed and the 15-year-old boy, the first person, says: "And it didn't help with all the reflection, wisdom, reflection, all common sense, I still couldn't mistake a hidden voice of low-pitched longing within me, as if embarrassed by his own irrationality but still increasingly conscious: I would like to live a little longer in this beautiful concentration camp.”

2020-04-06
Thinking about the drive for life. And the sensual pleasure of colors that attract the eye. The building blocks of the language of painting.

2020-04-11
I look up the page where Torgny Lindgren described the boy's flat stone, remembering that further down on the same page the short story ends with a wish to paint the mother: "The jet-black hair against the worn veining, a touch of shiny black against a base of yellow ochre with splashes of Naples yellow and Venetian red."

Now: 2025-04-15
I think black, Venetian red, Naples yellow and golden ochre are some colors that I will use for the paintings I will make.

PS. The diary entries from 2020 above are included in a text I wrote for the catalog "Konstbiotopen" published in connection with the exhibition "Art for birds, bumblebees, beetles, worms and mushrooms", Konsthall Norra Kvarken 2021.

Anna Kristensen

Anna Kristensen born 1956, Järvnäset (Strömsund municipality), based in Umeå

Conducts exhibitions, design assignments and art projects, teaches at art schools and works as a curator and consultant. In my paintings and installations – indoors and outdoors – I create fictional worlds, design and stage performances.

Website: www.annakristensen.com

Instagram: @annakristensen31