Alf Christian Hvaring is a young artist (only two years younger than me) and is considered one of our contemporary artists worth following. He has already been making a living as an artist for 13 years, just 2 years after completing his Master in Graphic Design at Oslo Academy of Fine Arts, one of the strong art academies we have in Norway.
He has been drawing for much longer than this, and already in middle school he told a teacher that he wanted to become an artist. The teacher's response was that he shouldn't waste his life fiddling with crayons.
Alf Christian, as an authoritarian and religious youth, studied science subjects such as math and physics in high school. These subjects suited his interest in astronomy and research, but after completing his education, he still chose to follow his dream of becoming an artist.
As an artist, he works extensively with graphic prints such as lithography and painting with acrylic and oil paints.
Lithography is a graphic planographic printing technique that dates back to the 19th century and is perfect for an artist who likes to play with crayons.
In short, the artist draws the motif with greasy litho ink or greasy litho chalk on a litho stone, often porous limestone. The stone is then washed with water, and when printing ink is applied, it will adhere perfectly where the motif has been drawn in greasy ink. The motif is then transferred onto high-quality cotton paper by massive printing from a litho press. The lithography technique often gives the artwork a woolly character, and is well suited to smooth surfaces, precise lines and slightly crisp pencil strokes.
In Alf Christian Hvaring's paintings, he uses acrylic paint, which gives precise lines and clear contrasts, and oil paint on details, which gives unclear boundaries and diffuse transitions. By using both acrylic and oil, he exploits the properties of both materials and creates
The techniques Alf Christian uses fit well with his expression, where he often creates an abstract landscape with figurative simple motifs of children and adults.
The scene he creates as a background is woolly and simple and can be reminiscent of an abstract landscape on other planets.
Hvaring thematizes private individuals in fleeting everyday moments with dreamy scenes. Motifs of people captured in a picture in a spontaneous moment, also identified as snap shots , invite us to take part in the story of a random person. He suggests an irony, a sentimentality to everyday questions about our existence.
The contrast he creates with diffuse abstract scenes and the naive depiction of a figurative story is as if we are brought close to a family album with faded edges and diffuse photography where we can compose and define the stories ourselves.
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