Welcome to Art Nordic Spotlight – a series where you meet some of the talents exhibiting at Art Nordic 2022. In this episode, you’ll get an insight into self-taught pastel artist and portraitist Christine Lembcke Petersen’s alluring pastel universe, where beauty and demons meet on canvas. Read more about Christine L. Petersen’s approach to art and what to look forward to at Art Nordic below:
“I strive to create both beautiful and provocative art – hence the name Art-Attitudes. All my works must have attitude.”
According to Christine L. Petersen, the human quest for beauty and perfection is an attempt to suppress flaws, dark sides and inner demons. This endeavor portrays Christine L. Petersen’s works in artistic debate with topics such as identity, gender roles and the balance between masculine and feminine expression. Contemporary currents and trends also act as strong sources of inspiration.
“My work “Beautiful Silence” refers, among other things, to Me Too and how the powers that be have silenced their victims for many years”.
The work “Mother of Nature”, which Christine L. Petersen created during a time of violent forest fires in Australia, also refers to how the beauty of nature can also show a brutality when humanity puts too much pressure on the planet’s resources.
When encountering Christine L. Petersen’s works, the viewer is invited to reflect on the world and society we are all a part of.
Art is allowed to grow in a symphony of rap music and coordinate systems
To the sounds of everything from Lil Nas X’s rap universe, Marshmello’s electronic beats to Kwamie Liv’s velvety voice, Christine L. Petersen follows a unique artistic process that leads from the blank paper to the finished artwork:
“I usually start by making a kind of graphic collage of what I want to draw, and then I scale it up to the size I want. Here I work with a ruler and a coordinate system to get the right proportions.”
Human expressions and portraits dominate Christine L. Petersen’s work:
“I am very fascinated by the body and human expression and love to draw hands and eyes, for example, because they are so detailed, expressive and tell so much about the individual,” says Christine L. Petersen and continues: “I love to go in depth with details and describe my art as photorealistic pop art. My desire is to create art that is aesthetic, but at the same time challenges the senses and imagination through embedded messages and the many detailed elements.”
“For as long as I can remember, I have always drawn and painted. It’s my meditative space and I can sit for hours locked in my own world. At one point I worked on a drawing for 8 hours and completely forgot to eat and drink. It’s a wild feeling when you’re in such a flow state and you forget everything around you”says Christine L. Petersen
An artistic journey from oil to pastel
Christine L. Petersen’s art journey began with oil paint, but in 2016 she was introduced to pastels by a Spanish artist in Malaga. It was a landmark meeting that created a great passion for the style:
“The colorful pencils that came in every color of the rainbow and with the same high pigmentation I knew and loved from oil paint became my artistic home”.
In 2018, Christine L. Petersen returned to Copenhagen with a large collection and a desire to work professionally with her art. An almost sold-out exhibition at Galleri KBH Kunst was an important turning point for Christine L. Petersen as an artist who finally began to see and perceive herself as an artist:
“I felt for the first time that I had found myself as an artist and I could see that I had a talent for working with color, light and shadow. And it suited my detail-oriented eye and slightly perfectionist approach”, Christine L. Petersen interjects.
Look forward to experiencing the colorful and attitudinal works at Art Nordic 24-26 June 2022, where Christine L. Petersen will also be live-drawing all three days. Read more about Christine L. Petersen on her artist profile via the link below:
