Ørnulf Opdahl’s paintings are majestic landscapes of his Norwegian homeland, scenes of immensity, of overpowering serenity, hard, cold and vast.
Opdahl is regarded as one of the most important painters working in Scandinavia today, his work moving between observation and abstraction with strong colours and bold forms used to build up his epic compositions that are often hidden in fog or snow bar a few solitary rays of sunlight merging with the darkening skies. It is this interplay between dark and light that gives his paintings a sense of the mythic, of tales told around fires of ancient Scandinavia.
Although its not clear on a computer screen Opdahl’s paintings have a tactile quality to them which he reinforces by mixing sand into his oil paint, building up each canvas, slowly, layer by layer, to give each picture a solidity that magnifies their strength, their permanence, as if he needs to assert the raw power of nature and our fragile relationship to it. As he puts it:
I create a piece of nature, in a way, with the textures. It’s tactile. It’s like stones…like sculpture almost.
While some of these paintings are clearly landscapes others verge on the abstract while retaining a sense of nature, a feeling that they are connected to the earth, the light negotiating our way through the darkness of the picture. Here’s what he has to say about his paintings:
I’ve been told that my paintings are dark, but I say that it’s not darkness. It’s light. I’m painting the light. And if you should paint the light, you have to use the contrast, the darkness. Winter in west Norway is very dark. The light is very low. And when the light is coming in the middle of the day, it’s fantastic things that happen then.