Page 24 - recent works

thrown overboard the values of our ancestors. We live in a world without
boundaries in which everything seems possible but this entails a freedom
and openness that can be difficult to deal with. In her painting it is as though
she wants to pull away Veronica’s sudarium and expose a state of turbulence,
dissolution and chaos.
What was initially a psychic impression on canvas has assumed a
somewhat different content with reflections on global threats and the
problematic state of the world’s water resources. Ann Frössén talks in
dystopian terms of the fact that the world’s water, like its oil, will soon
be reduced to a financially or politically tradable commodity. She warns
us of the risk ahead that poisoning the seas will be a weapon of warfare.
In conjunction with her exhibitions in Poland and in the Baltic states, we
are reminded of the irresponsible way that we treat the Baltic Sea – the
chemical factories that let untreated water flow into the sea and numerous
shipwrecks that contaminate the sea-bed.
The palette in these paintings consists of subdued colours with a
fundamental tone that is at home among gale-warnings and grey solemnity.
Above this fundamental tone, the expression ranges from an aggressive
mustard yellow and olive green to nuances of blue, turquoise and pink.

In her use of white she does not copy those many other painters who reduce
it to a non-colour. In Ann Frössén’s work the brilliant titanium-white has
many meanings, from sharp, nasty and threatening to tender and sensuous.
But it is no accident that white is the colour of weddings and of funerals or, for
that matter, of innocence and arsenic.
Each painting consists of more than 50 layers of paint – from the inky dark
ground to the final washes of transparent pink or grey. The oil based medium
was exchanged for acrylic paints some years ago due to environmental
reasons. The watersoluble acrylics allow a greater directness and flexibility
which suits an intuitive way of painting well.
Anyone familiar with Ann Frössén’s work will also have noticed that
the paintings have become gradually larger. Several of her latest canvases
measure two by three metres and are executed in both vertical and horizontal
formats. The foam of the waves sometimes seems about to burst the picture
plane and in some paintings one often senses an almost volcanic pressure.
This desire to physically occupy a space can be seen as a natural development
of Ann Frössén’s background as a set-designer.
The canvases with their breaking waves and their splashing swells do not just
give one an architectonic experience but are also reminiscent of watching a

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