Rigmor Nygaard, Awareness

I am a Norwegian artist who has been a member of Ålgården for 15 years and the work in this exhibition was produced here. I have a strong sense of “happiness” every time I come here and open the door to the workshop.
The smell of black makes me happy!
This workshop is one of the nicest I know and it is good to work here with nice, talented colleagues and all the equipment in place.
I feel privileged.

Started my art education at College in California, then art and craft school in Oslo, back to California many years later: San Francisco Art Inst., Chicago (The School of the Art Inst. of Ch), Parson, New York.
I like the graphics workshops at Ålgården in Borås the best.

Lives near Kongens Slott in Oslo and dreams of gardens and nature. Coming from Norway’s beautiful west coast, an island called Stord, right at the entrance to the Hardangerfjord, where they build oil rigs. My family was quite artistic, my father was a photographer, educated in Gothenburg, my uncle was an architect and grandfather a painter, so, “I can’t help it, it’s part of the family.”

My work is non-figurative and abstract as I play on senses and emotions. The expression varies between abstraction and symbolism. As my painting professor Morgan in San Francisco put it: “She has a strong emotional expression in her color expression, which is used in formal and expressive moods over a wide and varied range”.
Part of the work is directly inspired by the name ÅLGÅRDEN – here there were eels at the bottom of the river, hence the name ÅLGÅRDEN.
I have illustrated these as winding shapes in a series combined with other shapes.

The pictures here at the exhibition are mainly graphics as I like to experiment with different graphic techniques, preferably in the same work – Since I also work with Collage where thin layers are placed over the underlying, the work gives associations to communication and identity – to “seeing” each other – it becomes like life itself, layer upon layer.
Artists like to see what others don’t, AWARENESS-
My desire to experiment in my work is also about AWARENESS – As OSHO says: “the key to being self-directed, centered and free from every aspect of our lives – how to live more mindfully, consciously with love, care and awareness.”
In today’s society, I also care about this, to be awake and AWARE. Absolutely necessary for survival.
As the curious person that I am, I always come across something interesting in art and if I am open to new impulses, I use this in my work, such as e.g. on various courses here at Ålgården, inspiration from nature, from poems, old ship pages, rust etc…

The works in woodcuts in combination with other techniques I have called ALPHA BETHA and are based on a stylistic alphabet and which I have cut out of a wooden plate – have always dealt with writing and letters and in the alphabet everything is between A and Z : All words, all meanings and all good and bad – as in life otherwise.

Rigmor Nygaard
www.artbyrigmor.no