AS FAST AS THE EYE

 My job is to paint what I see, not what I know.
J. M. William Turner

There are pictures of Lars Lerin with square patches of light that are very puzzling at first. But then you realise that he is sitting in a bus, maybe on a train, looking out of the window and that the spots are therefore reflections of the windows opposite, behind him. Not even a photographer would have time to capture the view like that, as he travels through the landscape. Only the eye can both see and sketch the image in the visual cortex, at the very back of the brain. When it is “developed”, it is through a temperament. 

Lars Lerin does not just want us to know that he received his visual impressions as an attentive passenger on his way. He wants us to understand him as an explorer. He paints what he sees - or rather - what he has seen, preserved as an impression, as it looked, not how it should or should not look.

Lars Lerin works fast, perhaps not as fast as the eye, but fast enough so that the first visual impressions of the images evoked on the retina remain in focus when he starts painting.

There are also images with text as if from a reporter on the scene. Quick ones like theatre or courtroom drawings, from situations where photography is not allowed. Reportage from closed environments, where a snapshot of the hand is the only documentation possible - or allowed. The intention is to be as honest and ‘objective’ as possible. It is then up to the viewer to experience - and interpret - these unique events, adding their own memories and experiences. You want to believe in what you see, but also in what others may see for you. A trustworthiness that comes with time. Despite the reportage character, the images invite both affection and sentiment. Conversations arise.

Lars Lerin's paintings at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts are about constantly being on the move. Not staying in one and the same place longer than one can long to return. Travelling to discover and experience but continuing when the discovery is experienced.

Here are motifs from distant countries, as well as from around the corner in Värmland. Deserted houses in depopulated areas, but also harbours, boiling with life and movement. Scenes and snapshots with astonishing detail and presence. Here are a couple of images of adventurous people struggling to put up tents to protect themselves from the biting cold. Is it the foolhardy engineer André and his crew trying to survive on the polar ice? Or is it Lars again, travelling in northern Norway? He travels not only in the real world and in the realm of the imagination, but also without boundaries in time. A yellowed photo album from a flea market can take him on a desert walk in the last century.

The exhibition also includes images from Lofoten. A tumultuous settlement, a winter journey that lasted twelve years and never left him. Like a nagging conscience about right and wrong. He has travelled there in memory and painted, over and over again. The years have passed and there have been photographs to support him, but above all the images are stored in his own photographic memory. Manically developing - and processing - the memory images has made them increasingly clear, added to their sharpness until they now appear crystal clear.

Last summer, Lars Lerin returned to Svolvær for real, but not alone. He had invited travelling companions to share his pain. So, it went well. It also became a really interesting series for Swedish Television. He soon realised that most things were the same around Lofoten, just as stunningly beautiful and still one of the landscapes closest to him artistically. What he left behind, head over heels, was still there, as if waiting for him to return. In his new book, he writes: “Some journeys are at their best when you get home.”

All the works in the exhibition are in watercolour. This has not always been the case. Lars Lerin has tried many techniques: painting, printmaking, collage... But for many years now, watercolour has been his primary means of expression. It is a technique that cannot be completely controlled, it has a life of its own and the artist feels that it ‘fights back’. At the same time, time has overcome this resistance, sharpened his vision and technique, and made him one of the foremost masters of the capricious and unpredictable. So quick in his decisions and so confident in his handling that he is often able to take breathtaking excursions from the accepted methods and risky detours from the established path. 

Lars Lerin's longing for barren landscapes and harsh conditions, call it adventurousness, or just a longing away from the noise. An attraction to the uncomfortable, the everyday and the long lived by many, the majority in fact. Without nostalgia, without sentimentality, just loving observation. People and landscapes, far away and very close.

He writes hymn-like: ‘Wherever I have turned in the world, in whatever state of mind I have found myself, I have always been able to paint’. That sounds safe, like a secure place to be. Yet he must break away in order to move on.

So, what is it that makes Lars Lerin's paintings so appreciated and popular? Firstly, of course, it is his skill, everyone appreciates and admires a true craftsman. But above all it is his closeness, an everydayness, which also lends an unaffected credibility. With his anchoring, call it popularity, Lars Lerin has become a new reference point in Swedish art, something genuine and authentic, true and human, something worth striving for.

He paints what he sees - not what he thinks he knows.

SUNE NORDGREN