Pale skin, evident melancholy, and chromatic nuances emphasising an inner void… Why
depict this human facet? What attracts you to this mood?

Haha yes, good question! I think what is appealing to me in the existence of art in general is that it has this ability to tell a story of human existence. That’s what’s most important for me both as an art consumer and producer. As a producer, to get the feeling that I’m reaching or grasping further and further to try to formulate something that is of importance in my existence. And what that is I don’t really know, but I guess then that it is the figuration of the inner void, hehe.

The delicacy of unease emanating from your characters recalls some of the most recog- nised visual expressions, becoming part of a timeless aesthetic. If given the chance, is there a past era or period in which you would have liked to be an artist, or would you still choose the current one?

Oh, so much nice to choose from! Maybe modernism in Scandinavia. Compete with Munch on who’s the biggest drama queen and discuss psychologically trembling figuration with Carl Fredrik Hill, Ernst Josephson and Victoria Nygren. I mean assuming I could also be friends with whoever I want! I also like Vera Nilssons auto biographical paintings and Vilhelm Hammershøi’s dark iso- lated interiors a lot, and the weird touch of Nils Dardel. In the 20’s-30’s in Sweden there was also a groundbreaking generation of writers I would have loved to get a chance to meet. They were self taught working class writers that wrote on their own experiences, bravely and un-bound from writing traditions. Moa and Harry Martinsson for example, a couple after individually achieving recognition. Both wrote about their lives, Harry on escaping orphanages to become an unattend- ed vagabond as a young child, lying about his age to get work. And Moa on being a single mother and provider to a family in poverty. Both wrote in the unique forms that they found most artistically fruitful, I would have loved to meet them.

If your artistic vision is often shrouded in grey moods, laden with stories and melancholic eyes, what is your approach to everyday life? Do you have a different, more optimistic and energetic outlook, or do you notice a slight connection with your works?

I think people who know me would describe me as an optimistic and energetic person, definitely an enjoyer of life, but also with an eye towards the obscure corners and weird layers of the world. So both! I walk on the sunny side of the streets, but what I find an urge to put into figuration is other parts of existence, which of course comes from my experiences, otherwise I don’t think I would find it meaningful to formulate. A combination of fears and abstraction of memories I think works as motors. I have periodical insomnia which I have found to be an unexpected source, as Tove Jansson put it, the dark is darker at night.

If you had to choose: a book, a film, a painting, and a piece of music, without any con- straints or limits, that you feel resonates with your essence, somehow saying “this is a part of JUDIT,” what would they be?

I really do have a handful of works that I go back to on a regular basis, for direction or help or maybe for something more abstract, seeing if the ghosts from the works will enter the ghosts of mine. I think they could define some kind of abstract borders of what I am searching for.
Book: I choose to answer with a short story, A clean, well-lighted place by Hemingway. I’d also like to add Ecclesiastes from the Bible. I’m not religious but it’s on the list of works I’ve gone back to a lot lately. Both of them are, to my reading, nihilistic and dark and capturing existence and a nothingness in life, a Nada.