Daniel Hasselmyr

Biography

I was only 5 years old when my family moved from Sweden to South America. To me that was a great life improvement. Life was so much more exciting and fun for a child, and there was this beautiful strong sunlight that feels so good. Wonderful and strange fruits and animals. Supermarkets and shanty towns. Bowling alleys and revolutions with shooting in the streets. I especially remember the burning upside down cars and the carnivals and religious processions – a lot of visual impressions for a small kid.
Teenage years

At the time I had a passion of painting perfectionist jetfighters and spaceships. I did it in school and I did it at home. I must have made hundreds... When we moved back to Sweden after 5 years in the sunshine life suddenly felt diluted and pale. It was like coming into a vacuum. When I was 15 I started painting portraits in oil. After a couple of years I switched to watercolour, as I found it so nicely fluid – none of the stickiness of oil.
Maturing and quitting

I had lots of exhibitions between 25 and 35. Then came a period where I wanted to break all watercolour traditions. I wanted to take watercolour where it had never been before. This was an intense and wild period that lasted a couple of years. Then I stopped painting for 15 years.

During that period I often wondered if I ever would paint again. Had I lost it for good? When I turned 50 I moved from Sweden to Algarve - and I soon wanted to paint again. It was scary: could I still paint?

The first couple of paintings weren’t that good. After that they got better and better. Soon I realised that my talent had grown and matured during those 15 inactive years.
Inspired by the light

When I now started again, I got tons of inspiration. Coming to Algarve was like a time travel back to my 1950’s childhood in Venezuela. Nothing had changed. Time had been standing still in this dimension. The warm empty streets on a Sunday afternoon. (See painting: Lagoa 1985) The strong sunlight and dark shadows inspired me to paint. I can feel the next hundred paintings crawling around inside me, all fighting to get out first.

I think that I am now painting the strong impressions I had as a kid, mixed with my impressions of Algarve now. So maybe I see a personal magic dimension to what I look at. “It’s not really here...” It will probably be gone when I am gone. So was it really here when I was here? It’s like some of the vivid dreams I have - and I’m capturing it to paper. Deja vu.
It´s all one

Even when I look at what some people would call “ordinary” everyday motifs, I somehow look above or beneath the surface. Some parts loses importance, other become enhanced. When you see it that way, there can be as much beauty and artistic interest in a crowded street scene, or a ruin as there would be in a landscape or a horse. It’s all natural. It’s all part of our existence. When I travel I am not interested in the big national monuments, but the backstreets of the o...

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