They Nod To Me And I To Them 12

They nod to me and I to them
In the absence of nature the void becomes bodily
I nod to the blue in the distance and to the blue at the edges

The new series of paintings from Astri Stykestad Haukaas is the visual representation of the magnificence of nature and what the artist feels when she encounters it — or encounters its absence. At the core of the series is the theme of distance, as the artist considers what happens when we lose or are separated from someone or someplace significant to us. Throughout the series, each work, tinged with hints of blue, seems to ask: “Is the stone always looking for the mountain from which it came loose?” Each work inspires us to consider our own origin story, how far we’ve come, and how far we have yet to go.

Throughout her practice, the artist considers this quote from Rebecca Solnit:
“Perhaps it’s that you can’t go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision: the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the place that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess, and what in the end possesses you.”