The graphics were like coming home

In fact, just thirty years ago, the graphic artist Ann-Kerstina Nielsen had no connection whatsoever – absolutely none – with graphic art. Well, there were, of course, the linocuts created by Dea Trier Mørch and the Røde Mor collective: political art in the form of figurative and easily interpretable works. That was all she knew.

So when she started at Svendborg Art School in 1993, it was with a firm resolve to become a painter.

“Viggo Salting was my painting teacher, but his clown paintings, created using a light glazing technique, were a world away from what I wanted to achieve with my art. He noticed this too, so one day he said to me: ‘Wouldn’t you be better off popping down to see Jørgen Rosengaard? Jørgen was the school’s printmaking teacher’.”

Sold from the very first print

For Ann-Kerstina Nielsen, a whole new world opened up. “From the very first day, I was hooked… I’d come home,” she says of her encounter with printmaking – and in particular the technique behind it.

“Once I’d made my first print, I was absolutely certain that this was what I was meant to do. I’ve pretty much stuck to printmaking ever since,” she says, although she also has paintings on display in her and Per Buks’ gallery at 29 Ristingevej in Humble. And in the new premises at 33C Ristingevej, the studio is filled with ceramic experiments and objects.

A look around the gallery reveals, however, that printmaking is still her great… her greatest… love.

“I love the uncompromising nature of printmaking. Once you’ve drawn a line, it can’t be undone,” she points out, but adds that there’s always a way to salvage a print. One way or another.

The spice of life

But that wasn’t how the graphic artist Jørgen Rosengaard saw things when he was teaching.

“He would walk round amongst us students, and suddenly he’d snatch a printed sheet from us and crumple it up. We had to have something to say, to have guts. ‘The spice of life,’ he called it.”

Jørgen Rosengaard simply drummed the graphic techniques into his students’ heads: relief printing such as linocuts and woodcuts; intaglio printing such as etchings, drypoint and copperplate engraving; collography; lithography; screen printing; aquatint; and so on and so forth.

“Printmaking is like a kind of code you have to crack to understand that the finished print offers far greater depth and a sense of the story behind it than if it had been drawn. It brings a different kind of life to something you might otherwise just see as a bit of knick-knack.”

Printmaking is often referred to as the ‘black art’ and was previously associated with toxic chemicals.

“Back when people used to work in the studio from morning until afternoon, it was as if your taste buds died off by two o’clock. There were so many toxic fumes in the room.”

That is why Ann-Kerstina Nielsen now makes a point of working in a completely toxin-free environment.

The ellipse as a basic shape

In particular, she works with collography (cardboard printing), chine collé (where very thin paper is added to the heavy printing sheet during the process) and laser lithography (the transfer of printed photographs or text onto the printing sheet).

“But I now mix all kinds of graphic techniques in my pictures,” she explains, revealing that she has always used packaging and rubbish to print on and with.

“At first, people thought it was mad, but now it’s very much in keeping with the spirit of the times to print using tins and other items that have been flattened by cars. With collography, it all became easier, because I don’t need to search for metal and old Plexiglas window panes and hope that the materials have an interesting shape in themselves. Cardboard printing – collography – has the great advantage that I can easily cut it into the desired shape.”

The preferred basic shape in Ann-Kerstina Nielsen’s works is the ellipse – most often as the image of a submarine, but the helicopter also recurs as a motif.

“I am very fascinated by the contrast between the heavy and the light… the heavy submarine in the gentle water. Or the metal object, a helicopter, moving through the air. It’s about emotions and momentum”. Some people associate the submarine in particular with something eerie.

“But in reality, it’s simply a beautiful shape. Incidentally, it’s the same shape that my husband, Per Buk, uses. He adds beaks and claws to his ovals, turning them into birds. My ovals get periscopes, keels and rudders.”

The dog paintings

Every now and then, however, she needs a break from the printmaking workshop. After a particularly hectic period, she found her sanctuary, her ‘Hundested’. The paintings, which she constantly delights in, are all of dogs. Dogs with bushy ears, or spots, or stripes. Dogs with long legs, or stocky dogs with short legs.

“I don’t know why it just happened to be dogs. But that’s how it turned out.” The main inspiration is still iron, scratches, rust and bolts. The rugged submarine riveted together from sheets of metal. The helicopter, ready to take off or fluttering about in the air. A rescue or a threat?

In fact, Ann-Kerstina Nielsen trained as a technical assistant before becoming a graphic designer and artist. This suddenly makes her artistic penchant for dotted lines, rows of dots and circles with crosses seem obvious.

She laughs: “All those crosses marked lampposts in my previous job…”

From Svendborg to Langeland

After many years in Svendborg – where they even had a gallery in a prime location – Ann-Kerstina Nielsen and Per Buk moved to Langeland.

“Our best decision,” says Ann-Kerstina Nielsen of the move, which has given them more time for their art – without compromising their finances.

At first, they tried combining their home in Kædeby with the gallery and studio, but this meant their home had to be constantly ready for visitors.

Instead, they bought a property on Ristingevej in Humble, directly opposite Dagli’Brugsen, where they have retained the name Galleri No 44 from Svendborg and where, in addition to exhibitions, they also have their workshop and studio – Ann-Kerstina Nielsen on the ground floor and Per Buk on the first floor.