Paintings | Pernelle Maegaard

Forms of nature as a source of inspiration.

Acrylic on canvas 200×155 cm

Some of my first memories are pictures of myself “studying” and touching flowers on the forest floor. The wonderful world you see when you pick up some leaves and discover the structures and how the ground is teeming with life under your feet. Or when suddenly no wind blows, and the sun casts its light vertically on the surface of the lake.

For a brief moment you look down through the yellowish brown water and see all the movements which seem to take place in stratified worlds – from the muddy bottom of the sea to the water surface, where pond skaters display their dance. These kinds of images, patterns and movements are incised in my memory. They are like life companions me.

This is my starting point as a pictorial artist. Thomas Winding wrote the foreword to my book “Patterns from memory”: Some stones lie scattered on the beach, and a little child catches sight of them. She stands on them smiling with pleasure, because she has created order. The child steps down again – end of story. The child sees what is missing and fills it out.

Or: A TV commentator briefly gives his version of the world situation and picks up his papers in a way that suggests that there is nothing more to be said on the subject. With a few examples he has drawn a picture which makes sense to him and the editorial staff. Chaos has been framed and can rest until the next day. We seem to be endowed with a desire for creating order or balance, and some people have the ability to see it when it is present. But with many people this ability is displayed in empty aesthetics or a neurotic sense of order, and what could have been play turns to anxiety and grief.

With Pernelle Maegaard it has become art. She “sees” chaos and creates a temporary order; perceives a question and gives a possible answer. She observes a moving world and enjoys the states “of unrest and balance” she sees. When her pictures succeed, they are elusive and wholly universal at the same time and you are happy to be lost in them.
Acrylic on canvas 155×200 cm