Aprill Spendrup – visual artist of 2008
I’m trying to create an internal light and a musical soul in my painting. A body that gives form and meaning, light, atmosphere, place, volume, sound, rhythm and temperature. All these things fit together in painting and music, and in the wild. No other place in the world gives more expression of this than Koster Islands.
These wonderful sweet islands, which carries with it the Earth’s fragile soul and the ocean’s strong memory, is carried in every person who has visited, lived and understood their meaning. I was born on an island in the middle of the sea, which for me is life’s great musical gift. You may begin to understand what Koster, music and painting means to me and why I am here year after year. I have a small gallery called Gallery in the Green, near Ekenäs. It is called so because it is outdoors, and for that there is a well-known painting called “Breakfast in the green!”
There are some problems with hanging art outdoors, so I could not hold open so much last year, as you might imagine.
In England I studied in a food and design college in Bath, where I could develop my artistic and culinary interests, and then I took a Bachelor degree at Bristol University in educational psychology. Not until I met Professor Georg Suttner in Florence in 1987, I began to paint in oil, and eventually I went into teaching with him for many years on Gerlesborg School. Georg Suttner and Olle Kåks have been my two main arts teachers and mentors, and it is with pride I paint colouristically, in their spirit and with their words ringing in my ear.
My exhibitions have mainly been in France, Spain, at Koster and the rest of Sweden. The latest was a group exhibition at the Culture House in Stockholm. I can not paint as much as I would like to because I work full time with the furnishings and food report and have two wonderful musical boys – Sebastian and Oscar – who need my attention, but one day!
My other passion in addition to art, is music in all its forms. I sing solo and choir, and has applied to Katarina Church in Stockholm, so we may see what happens with it. Music is life. I draw great inspiration, power and happiness from it. That we have received a chamber music festival of this caliber to Koster is completely unbelievable and it is with great pleasure, joy and humility I am this year’s festival artist in 2008. Hope to see you.
Aprill Spendrup
