PIET PEDERSEN

I am an artist living in Skanderborg in Denmark and I am 49 years old. I have been drawing and painting my entire life and I am so lucky to have room in my life to paint, with family and all. To me it means stability, joy, peace and lots of colors.

For some years I have been working with commercials as a sign writer.  It doesn’t mean much for my painting style, but it provides me some discipline in my work. I love to tell a story and I am seeking the motif in the motif. Therefore you can often recognize it and see what it looks like. If people can recognize the shape, you can put almost anything in it, and get away with it.

I seldom paint the same motif more than once.  I am always trying to renew my self from time to time, but I am stuck with certain figures and colors or they are stuck with me. Often I have been painting the rhinos. It s almost extinct, but then again, it has a protecting armor. The similarities to my own life exist in every thing. Sometimes we need protection against the world. The pictures of a bull and a woman I see as if I am the bull pressing on while the woman is a expression of my inner vulnerability. The toucan is a self-portrait from my soul, representing my soul. As a bird, I have the big view at the world and thereby the sense of happy colors and happy moments. I see the toucan as a symbol of freedom and good values and my direct contact with my inner soul as a painter. The toucan is always with me in my work, monitoring my work and securing it is well done. A free bird with happiness in colors and expression…..it should appear as often as possible in my work.

Sometimes I pick up my inspiration in the darkness of my soul. It often appears as (brightness) clarity of colors. At other times I catch a glimpse of something, and it gets reworked until it shows who I am and what I want.  It all goes trough a process where I am exploring it and if I can approve it, its end up with my signature. There is at all times an inner connection and drive to keep on painting. I don’t paint to be famous or to receive recognition.  I paint because the urges demand me to, and therefore I just keep on painting.

A combination of urge and joy, irony and fun, are the forces that push me forwards and upwards.  All in all it brings enough happiness to keep on painting in the future. I want to paint pictures that make people smile and bring happiness, smile and energy. To bring people joy and a laugh with fun and irony is the driving force. A scarecrow made of wood, crowned as a king and a happy toucan, a less than perfect horse and a rhino make you laugh. All my paintings are made with a twinkle in the eye and they are meant to say that it is okay not to be perfect. Floss is what life is full of, its only people that has no tolerance. I wish my paintings could say “you are okay” and “everybody is okay”. If I succeed in this, I feel fine. That is what makes me tick.  

Nothing is perfect and perfection may not be the most important, there should always be room for floss.

 www.pietpedersen.dk  www.pietsign.dk

Piet Pedersen, Denmark