A personal presentation about art in the World Heritage site – The High Coast in Sweden

Margareta Petré
Artist
Sweden
November 2004
http://www.margaretapetre.com

Margareta Petré was commissioned to create twelve paintings, one for each month of the year, for an art calendar 'The Art of the World Heritage Coast'. The original paintings were exhibited at Länsmuseet i Västernorrland in Härnösand in early 2004.

The High Coast became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 because of the area's unique geology, and literally rising land – the most rapid in the world.

The area of Nordingrå is the heart of the High Coast. Up on a mountain you can see clearly how the land has risen out of the sea. When you stand on the top of a mountain looking forward towards another mountain you are level with its visible 'old' coastline, and would once have been in the sea! It is fantastic that you so visibly can experience the giddy perspectives of time while all the time you know the land is constantly and slowly rising out of the sea.

A 'nature in movement' – dramatic, dynamic, full of contrasts, constantly changing with specific conditions of light – arises here. Powerful direct sunlight, drifts of light, and fogs of light make the mountains weightless. In this nature, which almost forces a creative response, I have had the benefit of partly growing up. I have been formed by it, and identify myself with it. For generations The High Coast has attracted, fascinated and inspired artists of all kinds. Many of us also originate from here. One of our great Swedish composers – Willhelm Pettersson-Berger (1867–1942) – was born here. A national romantic, he was also an author, cultural philosopher and a famous music critic. Feared by many, he was called "Pettersson-Angryman".

Almost his opposite, another great composer, Frans Berwald (1776–1868), came to Sandö on the Ångermanland River, where he became managing director of a glassworks. His home became a music centre where world famous opera singers came to perform and today the Berwald concert hall (built in 1976–1979) in Stockholm, is named after him. On the other side of the river, Margareta Hallin, one of today's greatest opera singers and now also a composer, has settled. Music and singing have deep roots in this area. It is as if nature itself echoes with music, a real basis for all forms of musical practice. In many, many homes there is an organ, and the traditions of folk music and choir-singing are rich.

Helmer Osslund (1866–1938), the first great painter from the north of Sweden, devoted his whole power and love to painting and nature, especially in Nordingrå. Frequently he climbed up in the mountains with his artists' materials, the simplest possible – just small pieces of grease-proof paper attached to cardboard, with the joints painted over. There is often no foothold in any foreground in his paintings. You almost exist in the air, and experience with him the depth and the wide open space far away towards the horizon. For a painting of a sunset from a mountain he was awarded first prize at the World Exhibition in Chicago.

Another painter and poet, Pelle Molin, was a man of similar eminence. He put himself on a platform in a fast-flowing stream, with his easel and artists' materials. He loved the fast-flowing stream, and to get close enough to study the quick movements in the water there existed no compromises. He died in 1896, only 32 years old.

Albert Viksten (1889–1969) was a forester from up north. He was an author, poet, drawer, painter – in all a man of nature. "In my whole life the power of nature has been my religion", said an aged Viksten. On his gravestone by a lake it says only this: "Here rests a pious heathen".

People in this area have also for generations become accustomed to us artists. We are not looked upon as so different. Besides, these people along the coast are themselves distinguished by their own imaginative self-wills and an ability to survive that an untameable nature demands.

In the early 1970s we were a set of painters who by ourselves started an exhibition activity that grew into an idea of multimedia. Later Anders Åberg built, and continues to build, "in full scale" a very special museum 'world' offering many different buildings furnished in different ways. In an old power station named 'BOX' along the river, the painter Mats Duval has created an International Art Centre with a park with sculptures. Today we also have installation art in the landscape, and many other mixed forms of art.

Back to nature! Up in the mountains! Like Helmer Osslund, I love walking in the mountains and like him I most of all lift from the ground, and paint with a bird's perspective, from mountain towards mountain. The space, the light, the air itself, shall in some way be in the painting. I paint with my hands as if I was playing – sculpturing with immaterial mass. Even my landscapes are painted that way.