Pictorial Artist Kurt Servé

Every spring and autumn I go up north with my rucksack, binocular and my drawing/painting tools. Up here I find the magnificent, tough and untouched nature that talk to all my senses. My travels have taken me to the Hebrides, the Orkneys, Iceland, Greenland and the Lofote and especially the Faroe Islands, where I have been about 15 times.

		The huge bird cliffs, the screams of ten thousands of sea-birds, the roar down under from the sea, the fog that is slowly creeping up through a valley situated very lonely, the screams of the oyster catchers, which echo between the mountains – the wind, the cold, the loneliness, the mystery and the changing light.

I take all these impressions with me in my mind, in my drawings and in my paintings. In the middle of this violent and beautiful nature I am sitting with my drawing block and my colours. I have created many of my paintings dressed in polar clothes, sheltered by a rock, with stiff fingers and a vacuum jug next to me. When I work I can leave out or intensify what I see. In this way I am able to include the cold, the wind, the light, the roar of the waves, the screams of the birds and anything else. The photo can’t do that. The paintings that are created here are completely attached to time and place. The line is fast and spontaneous. These paintings have been finished on the spot, and I don’t touch them when I have come back home. Most of my paintings have been created in this way. Only some of these paintings can stand for a closer evaluation at home and will be exhibited. But I also make a lot of sketches in black/white, which shall be the background of the paintings I shall later paint in my studio.

This is how I paint

In my gallery which you can see on the next pages you will see examples of my different paintings. The small ones are all painted on the spot out there in nature. The big ones are all starting from the sketches that I have made during my trips. On the sketches I normally write a little about the sounds, the screams of the birds, the sound of the sea, the wind and all that influence my senses. I use some special paper called Ingrés paper. It is a strong, fast paper with very fine grooves, that give some structure and character to the surface of the painting, and besides it has a good ability of fastening my colours.

I always use some colours called Caran D’ache oilpastel. These colours are the very best and completely fast. Having finished a painting I fix it with a special fixative and after that I give it a special varnish. The surface is now as hard as an oil painting and can stand a touch. Then the painting is mounted by a special vacuum method on a cardboard free from acid. Not until now the painting is ready to be framed. Normally I use frames in blond wood. These frames are called “floating frames”, because there is some space between the painting and the frame.

Welcome to my page.