ARTIST STATEMENT: ANDERS KNUTSSON

Art for me is a journey of discovery into the unknown. “Not knowing” what each painting will be is tremendously exciting.

For the past 20 years, I have been exploring the properties of unique full spectrum luminous pigments. These phosphorescent materials are exciting, mysterious, surprising and have little known history in painting. I believe that the handful of artists, of which I am one, determined enough to work with this difficult pigment, are truly explorers in artistic territory still to be charted.

This material seems to me to be like a “gift of the gods to humanity”. But like all gifts, the recipients don’t always know what to do with them. The material has an interesting history of attempted adaptability. Phosphorescent minerals were first discovered in the Renaissance (1603) - people were awed by this substance. Galileo rushed to where the goat herders first found this mineral to examine it. The philosophers tried to understand it; the alchemists tried to manipulate it – but no one could find any use for it; nor could they find a way to make money. They were extremely frustrated because they intuitively understood a new phenomena had been discovered and they didn’t know what to do with it. Eventually, their curiosity faded but their research into the nature of light continued. (Historians have acclaimed this discovery (phosphorescent minerals and man’s subsequent ability to recreate it) to be the greatest discovery in the history of inorganic luminescence). The 19th century saw a renewed interest in phosphorescent minerals by scientists who studied radiation and other elements that radiated energy; it was scientifically explained by a French physicist - Antoin Becquerel (1852-1908). Finally, we in the the 20th century took this material and started to work with it. This material has been used by the military, commercially by watch manufacturers, 3M (luminous tape), the Catholic Church (rosary beads) and children’s toys (glow in the dark objects). Simple phosphorescence was briefly used by artists in the first half of the 20th century (Kandinsky, Fontana, L. Fuller) and it had great notoriety in the late 1940’s, primarily in dance (phosphorescent ballet).

The material that I use is a synthetic material created in laboratories in America, Europe and Japan. The development of the full spectrum pigment in the last 10 years has created tremendous artistic potential. However, the full spectrum pigments are hard to find, expensive, and difficult to work with – it’s alchemical secrets yield only to those persistent in unlocking its secrets. The challenge to develop, define and articulate the use of this unknown material in the realm of painting continues to be enormously exciting and inspiring - to create works of art that are original, authentic and speak to our age.

When I first began to work with phosphorescent pigments, I was both startled and very excited by the results! I was intrigued by four visually striking things that, when the light was turned off, happened at once.

· Light came out of the painting

· The image I had just seen with the light on was now different

· The image I was now looking at was slowly changing

· The painting, the object, had disappeared and was now immaterial light!

Different from the typical pigments that reflected light, these pigments emitted colored light in the dark. The light from the paint faded at different rates of time for different colors, ranging from one minute to many hours.

I work with luminosity by mixing these phosphorescent pigments with traditional ground color pigments and oil/wax or acrylic medium. The paintings are meant to be viewed in the dark as well as under traditional gallery lights. In the light, the paintings are light filled and luminous. In the dark, each color changes in tone and intensity at a different rate of speed – the storm of electrons that come into one’s eyes are powerful and very sensory and create that immediate surprise that some have called the “wow” moment.

Light has been used in painting to suggest the existence of another force, a non material world, an inner reality we all know exists and whose presence is of vital importance to painting as art, regardless of style and time. In my mysteriously complex and changing paintings, light is emitted from within, rather than reflected from the surface and this difference is the source of a new expression of light.

It was always obvious to me that movement and time were an integral part of this experience – that intrinsic to the experience of this work was movement of light. What started as improvisatory light “performances” using an ordinary camera flash at my exhibitions, developed into a performance concept. In 1999, I began to work with musicians and dancers to develop a performance concept that is improvisatory and experimental in nature. The performance has three equal components: sound, movement, and light. Like a jazz trio, the luminous performance trio must be able to blend their talent and energy with the other performers to create a "performance of the moment" dynamic. This element of unpredictability and spontaneity gives the performance its excitement. Equally exciting is the altering of expectations. The traditional expectations of paintings, dance and music are suspended: color is freed from the canvas, music from the instrument and movement from the body.

I continue to work with phosphorescent pigments as a material whose properties I am still understanding and whose secrets I am continuing to unlock through my work in painting, performance, glass work, print and sculpture.