Page 28 - recent works

backwards and to the side. In other paintings Ann Frössén has drawn the
contours of an outstretched hand or a partially hidden eye. The extended
fingers act equally as a confident sign of victory and an anxiety-laden cry for
help. Yet other works seem to have been caught by the frost or to be cast in
thick layers of ice.
Working on such a large scale necessitates special techniques and in
the studio Ann Frössén normally uses a ladder. Otherwise it is impossible
to reach the entire span of waves. During the final phase she descends the
ladder to view the painting from a distance. It is time for the laborious task
of “sorting things” – a meticulous revision whereby various waves and chasms
are forced to change direction and new washes are added to conceal the old
ones.
In this extensive reworking she makes full use of opposites. Out of
order she creates chaos, but equally, turns chaos into order. To the eye these
additions may seem accidental – a colour accent here or there – but every
brushstroke is carefully thought out. No crest of a wave, no point must remain
lifeless.

Over the years her paintings have been shown in environments that have
a connection with water and the sea. The exhibition Mare Animae, for
example, toured a succession of maritime museums in Sweden, the Baltic
States, Poland, Denmark and Germany – museums that one does not usually
associate with painting or art in general. But this has been a conscious choice
and she speaks of the adventure of meeting a new, broad public: people who
are interested in the sea or generally curious but who are not always familiar
with contemporary art.
TV and radio producers like to accompany a poem or a meditative mood
with a seascape or a bubbling mountain brook. But in recent times water
has also come to be associated with catastrophes of almost apocalyptical
dimensions, such as the sinking of the Estonia in the Baltic with the loss of over
800 lives or the Tsunami disaster that struck much of Asia during Christmas
2004.
For Ann Frössén oceans and seas – sometimes even a waterfall – contain
all these dimensions. Despite the subdued and serious mode of expression,
she paints in order to generate vital energy and inspiration. “If I can survive
close to deep waters then I know that other people can do it too.”
Confronted with all these paintings of sea and yet more sea, another
question spontaneously arises: what happens beyond the canvas? Maybe
a battle at sea, with people in peril on a capsized raft just as the ropes that

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