Biography

 

- at times rhythmic and other times fearlessly exposing the rawest elements of the human emotion.   (Lisa Bently, ArtApproach, NY)

 

 

Kari Elisabeth Haug was born in 1956. She grew up in Kråkstad, Nordre Follo community, just outside Oslo. She is now living in Sande, a small place by the Oslofjord , not far from where she was born. From her childhood she has used her creative ways of expression, and as a child she won several prizes in different drawing competitions. Her music abilities are very important for her art. She plays the piano and writes poems to her paintings.

Growing up on a farm and now living by the sea have had an important impact on her art. Education and experience of life have led to the interest of existential questions. Therefore, for her, it is not important to paint what you ”see”. The challenge is to paint what you perceive.

Kari Elisabeth`s works are based on intuition and experimental language where the drawings and figures are the foundation of the story. With the starting point in mental moods uatebased on psychological dramas the vulnerability  emerges in contrast to the real world which looks cold and threatening. 

I am always searching for the most simple and most honest line to accentuate my own presence in my time, she says.

The title of the exhibition is «The Power of being» and is inspired by Kristin  Flood`s book «Presence» where the power og of presence is mentioned as a keynote everybody has received from birth, but which very few are capable of using.

For many years she has been working as a teacher in esthetic subjects. It is however in the recent years she has been able to develop her own expression in her art. After her first solo exhibition in the theatre of Drammen in 2008, she was contacted by Saatchi Gallery in London. After this she was invited to the biennial in Florence. Since then her paintings have been exhibited in several solo and groupexhibitions in Norway, New York, Rome, Paris, Vennice, Florence, Istanbul, Las Vegas, Monaco, and they are also published in artbooks and artmagazines in Europe and in the US. She has received several international awards for her work.

Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art, Las Vegas, has her works in their collection.

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..it is personal biography meets movement, passion and a very physiological presence. Amidst a sea of art, you manage to say something very different. (Lisa Bently, Art Approach, NY)

We have Haug to thank for bringing the spirit of her visionary world into ours. Haug finds her ideology in the deep contours of creation. It is her acute love and understanding of color, composition, and positivity that lends comparisons to Picasso, Edvard Munch, Rothko, and Chagall. 

(Persis May Singh, kunsthistoriker, USA)

 

 

From the exhibition in the Gallery Møllabekken, Norway

This is a strong and special contemporary exhibition.

(Lidia I. Myhre, the Manager of Culture in Øvre Eiker, Norway)

The visitors have spent a lot of time watching your paintings, many people are moved by you art.

(Ingjerd Holmes, owner of the Gallery Møllabekken)        

 

 

I like this thought when I paint:

 

Platon the Greec philosopher, stated that there is another reality in addition to the reality we can percept around us. This other reality is, though we can not percept it, more real, more fundamental and even more important than the perceptive reality.

 

 

Mention- Drammens Tidende

 

It is the first time the versatile artist exhibit in Drammen. She has called the exhibition “Winter landscape”. She also plays her own music and perform her own poems. 

Kari Elisabeth Haug gets her colours and motives from an inner landscape through experiences. It is in this meeting I communicate with others, it is here I get to meet other peoples feelings says Kari Elisabeth Haug by the main painting “Winterlandscape” and “Frost” in chilly bluish colours. Apart from that there is much colour in her artistic landscape. 

During the opening Kari Elisabeth Haug will perform some of her poems and play some of Edward Grieg`s lyrical music. 

Kari Elisabeth Haug makes her works in acryl. The expression is often abstract and intuitive. The shapes are open, it symbolizes life and man in an everlasting development and transformation. Together with powerful colours I try to pass on thoughts, feelings and experiences in such a way that the receiver also can put his interpretation in the painting, she says, excited about the audience`s reception in the Theatre of Drammen. The exhibition will last until Easter 2008.