Pilsnabbt 2005

Rune Jansson made Pilsnabbt on canvas, and you can see how he was really exploring the push and pull of colour and form. It's almost as though he was thinking aloud with paint. The painting has a sparse, airy quality, using thin washes and delicate lines. The texture is smooth and almost translucent in places, allowing the white of the canvas to peek through. Look at the top left corner; see that bold black stroke slicing across the ochre? It's so decisive, yet it dissolves into hazy, blurred edges, a wonderful contrast. It feels like a fleeting thought captured mid-flight, a moment of clarity amidst ambiguity. Jansson's use of line and colour reminds me a little of Cy Twombly, in the way that both artists embrace imperfection and gesture as a way of communicating raw emotion. Like Twombly, Jansson isn’t trying to give us all the answers, but to embrace art as an ongoing conversation with no fixed meaning.