Heidi Karina Schiøtz

101 artist 23/24 Carrousel de Louvre Prize Botticelli24

By Tom Jørgensen, art reviewer at Jyllands Posten, editor of Kunstavisen

“The Last Sun” is planned by Heidi Schiøtz as a series of paintings about the four seasons. The four seasons, which can again be interpreted as the four ages of life – a frequent motif in the art of older times, e.g. in the Renaissance.

The paintings that represent summer. There is no doubt. The colors are deep and glowing, rose, yellow, bottle green and pink. High summer brimming with life, warmth and growth accompanied by buzzing insects and the gentle summer breeze.

The images are not naturalistic. We recognize trees, fields and perhaps a horizon lily, but it is more summer as a process and a feeling that Heidi Schiøtz wants to portray. You could say the essence of summer. The light is the most important thing. In her series about spring, the light is still tenuous and cautious. Here in the height of summer, it is almost luxuriantly saturated with heat and excess.

At the end of August, however, it is as if you start to feel the arrival of autumn. One feels that all the lavish growth will soon stop. A slightly spicy scent spreads, a warning of leaf fall and flowering. Here, just before all this will happen, it is as if the scents, flavors and colors become extra saturated with an intensity that seems to repeat itself in Heidi Schiøtz’s paintings. One last effort, one last burst of life.

In this way, the images defy the title in a way. The sun is present to the highest degree, mighty and big. Seen in the context of the four ages of life, this is the stage of the adult person before the autumn of middle-aged life sets in. For us, it ends with winter and death. Nature, on the other hand, is cyclical. Here, the death of winter has already planted the life-giving sprouts of spring in it. You can choose to see Heidi Schiøtz’s paintings as a cyclical series. A bit in the style of Asger Jorn’s “Wheel of Life”, which is again inspired by images from the Middle Ages. Here, in one and the same picture, the entire life cycle is rolled up before our eyes.

Part of what makes Heidi Schiøtz’s paintings so vivid and present is her ability to create depth in the images with laser-like layers of colour. The fabric seems to vibrate as if in a mist of colour. Beautiful, sensual and poetic. These are paintings that you register not only with your eyes, but with your whole mind. Bringing memories of hot, hot summer days.

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