Hjördis Baacke

Hjördis Baacke paints forests. Realistically, with a special focus on light, which sometimes gives her canvases an impressive effect. Every forest has its own character, its own personality, and Baacke's forest paintings are like portraits.

At least since the coronavirus years with their restrictions, the forest has once again become a place of refuge and longing. The new uncertainty and increasing strangeness in cities are also contributing to this: interest in this unique biotope is booming.

This phenomenon is not occurring for the first time in history. Interest in the forest already awakened during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Solitude in nature is an important theme in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Carl Maria von Weber's “Freischütz,” premiered in 1821, brought the motif into music. The Düsseldorf school of painting, the Barbizon school, and their successors in Europe and America produced thousands of forest motifs.

Modernism and the avant-garde turned their attention to new industries, the proletariat, class struggle, cities, airplanes and ships, the sky and the sea. The world seemed open and full of promise. The forest, with its shadows, hiding places, and secrets, was considered a refuge for the irrational.

We have since learned that reason and science, alongside their effective and convenient inventions, also produce weapons of mass destruction, ideologies, environmental disasters, and climate change. Their achievements often make us sluggish, cause us to degenerate in many areas, partially alter our genetics, and produce epidemics.

The human will to create urgently needs to be brought into line with the natural systems that have balanced themselves over millions of years and brought us into being. Not in the sense of escapism, but rather a return to learning and observing. Forest images, which were considered obsolete for over a century, are now highly topical again.

Hjördis Baacke's paintings fill a gap that has long been waiting to be filled. Forest images were virtually taboo for a century, and it takes courage to reinvent this highly topical subject. The artist writes about her works:

“Each of us has countless different images of forests stored in our minds, evoking various associations. These can be our own memories, but also vacation photos from friends, illustrations in books and advertisements, and of course film styles from fairy tales, nature films, and horror movies.”

The forest is full of projections. The light is always the decisive factor.

I am interested in moments that particularly highlight the character of a particular forest, that bathe it in a special light and reveal facets that are striking or distinctive.

I choose image details that are as unspectacular as possible and largely free of my associations. I want to see and reproduce the forest in its play of colors. The light reveals the individual layers of vegetation and gives me a visual orientation. My images follow the gaze of the light."