Pizza Box Portraits, 2005

During a stay abroad in Nykarleby (a small and beautiful nest at the Finnish west coast – with an art school, tough) I painted a series of portraits of my class mates. To obtain materials in the middle of nowhere was a rather difficult task and required quite some creativity by itself. It always seemed best to pore over such problems over a good slice of pizza, delivered by the local pub. The pizza boxes started stacking quickly – but also brought solutions. They replaced canvas perfectly and gave lunch breaks a completely different meaning (instead of painting in order to buy food I kept eating in order to get something to paint on). Per pizza a picture – this was rule #1, followed by: Don’t spend more than four hours of work on one portrait and don’t put the brush down until it’s finished. After that I usually got hungry.

A selection:

From top to bottom:
Ninni, Minna, Marcus, Kristina