Charlotte Engelhaart

Charlotte Engelhaart is best known as a painter, but her work also includes video installations. She studied at The National Academy of Fine Art in Bergen Norway from 1996-2001. Her works have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Norway as well as in Europe, and belong to numerous public and private collections. Engelhaart lives and work at Nesodden, just outside of Oslo. She is a member of the artist organizations: NBK, UKS and LNM

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is oriented towards how the act of paint can reveal something about human identity, nature or history. In that both of my parents were orphans and grew up without family, I found myself early on in my life looking for roots and the sense of belonging. The secrets around my unknown relatives, their lives and persona made me look for stories behind the random faces staring at me from photographs. The human gaze became my inspiration and a way into representative painting.

My identity as a painter is located between figuration and abstraction. The human expression in dialogue with the complexity of a painted surface has been a conceptual
cornerstone for most of my career as an artist. The motifs in my pantings are taken from different sources, such as private family albums, newspapers, films or the internet. When the mystery of a human image merges with the abstract poetry of painting, new and untold stories arise beyond the visible surface. In the context of our
contemporary mass communication my commitment to the visual language of paint serves for me as a way to silence the mind and comprehend questions about life and humanity. The viewer does nor only perceive an immediate visual experience, but is also left to process the complexity of mankind in a frozen moment in time. I think of the way I work as a love affair, a place fed from human nature, unfolded by paint.