From a distance, the ink wash paintings made by Swedish artist Gunnel Wåhlstrand could conceivably be photographs. Even as you step closer and let them pull you in—perhaps with a wondrous slash of dancing light on water, or an incredible hairdo—the idea of them being entirely handmade seems almost implausible. From a portrait of the artist’s mother, captured in a lilac dress and strands of delicate stones around her neck, to an elegantly spare Swedish coastline, Wåhlstrand’s intense, evocative work simultaneously moves, transports, haunts, and mystifies.
From her studio on an island in Stockholm, Wåhlstrand unpicks her various artistic motivations and inspirations: the suicide of her father when she was one year old; the great musical influence of award-winning composer Wendy Carlos, who created soundtracks for Stanley Kubrick. So too does she reveal the very particular working processes that combine to form her deeply personal practice.
Each painting takes between four to six months. Wåhlstrand never tells anyone, including her gallery, what she is working on. “It’s always been like that. I like to have it as a secret—it makes it more special to enter the room,” she explains. Sometimes her nine-year-old daughter, Turid, will wait for her by the studio door (Turid wants to be a painter too)—or, if invited in, will sit on the floor and draw.
Wåhlstrand likes to talk to her paintings and play the same four or so albums repeatedly. Lately, she’s been listening to American composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros, whose minimal music reminds Wåhlstrand of breathing. It’s when she thinks a painting might be ready—and only then—that Jenna Hultén, her partner of 27 years and a musician herself, is allowed to enter Wåhlstrand’s studio to tell her whether the piece is done or not.
In addition to Carlos, Wåhlstrand calls out Edvard Munch, Gerhard Richter, and Ola Billgren as inspirations, though it was the look of a series of ink paintings—Jesus Serene (1994) by Marlene Dumas—that Wåhlstrand says led her to experiment with the medium. She began by painting people from her parents’ old school photo album. “I didn’t dare paint them, so I painted the other people in the album, until I realized I was working around something more important: the photos of my father, and the ones he took of my mother and the time they had together.”
Wåhlstrand’s painting method is high-risk: once the ink touches the paper, it cannot be altered. That sense of danger shows up in the work. “I tried to paint in ink that you could remove with water, but it wasn’t the same—everything just felt dead,” she says. “I think I need to feel that I am performing, in a way.”