"An art of passage, about reality that has already passed by...and which leaves a spread or spray of traces. Like the pulse of red that stays on the desert horizon for some minutes after the sun has set, or the lemon-colored track of urine in the snow. Art that shadows reality, delicately following in its half-blurred tracks, sketching it from afar." -Susan Sontag, 1981 The empty space of Edvard Munch’s atelier is a reminder of the living paradox of nature as both fleeting and transitory, but also endless and eternal. Exploring the empty space, I find traces of both absence and presence. Traces of paint on the floor and table, small cracks in the wall showing the layers behind, and the echo of stillness of human absence lingering between a natural physical world and an unseen world. As I start painting, an inner dialog begins, and a sense of leaving behind an eternal trace develops, while at the same time knowing the process of painting is a temporal act with a beginning and end. It is a feeling of processing a connection of an infiniteness of traces, while the painting itself represents an intangible void between myself and the surrounding space. My process continues. I welcome everyone to my "open studio", works in progress, thursday 31.march. 1700-1900. Edvard Munch Atelier, Jarlsborgveien 14, 0379 Oslo. "Could it think, the heart would stop beating." F.P