Gold Medalist Portfolios

I was first exposed to the beautiful art of rosemaling eleven years ago when I took a class with my 12-year-old daughter for fun and bonding. I had never painted artistically before that. My early pieces could provide a perfect example of how practice, hard work, and passion can move a person with no artistic background to become a skilled artist. I have taken classes from many accomplished rosemalers and gold medalists. Steadily, I improved my skills as I worked my way through competitive levels of painting and exhibits as beginner, intermediate, advanced, professional, Nordic rose, and very recently, Vesterheim Gold Medalist!

I still have much to learn and must continually improve my knowledge and techniques. I want to preserve the old traditions because I think people of all cultural backgrounds today would fall in love with rosemaling if they could see the diversity and creativity inspired by the early rural artists.

Telemark and Gudbrandsdal are the most beautiful, dramatic, and perhaps difficult styles to paint in my opinion. I credit two of my teachers for my development as an artist. Juel Krueger, now 91 years old, instilled in me a certain fearlessness and ability to design original Telemark art. Then I was most fortunate to be accepted into a one-year apprenticeship with Master Rosemaler Andrea Herkert, VGM, in which we spent immersive days at the Vesterheim Museum and her studio. We studied portfolios of several rosemaling styles. First, I would watch as Andrea painted in a specific style. Next, I would go home and try my hand at my interpretation of what I learned, and then, most importantly, I received critical feedback on my work. This process of engaging with the styles on a deeper level became my blueprint for growth.

That understanding began to come when I took a knife making class with Håvard Bergland at Vesterheim in the early 1990s. I had long been interested in knives, and I was particularly beguiled by the organic unity between the tollekniv and its sheath. The sheath was especially mysterious. How could such a thing be made?

Håvard was a rigorous and generous teacher, and he was also a walking encyclopedia of Norse folk art. That initial experience led to a long succession of knife classes with other Norwegian makes, and to a widening interest in the more general traditions of Norse craftsmanship. As I gained experience, I began to discover commonalities among the disciplines. I saw knifemaking in specific and Norse folk art in general as a ceaseless quest to achieve the unity of form with function and the marriage between beauty and utility.

As a knife maker, I see myself more as craftsman than as artist, and I see the goal of craftsmanship as a striving toward the functional unity of the useful with the beautiful. That goal is certainly an essential part of the Norse knife tradition, and I know now that it applies with equal aptitude to a wide variety of other pursuits as well. It might not even be too bad as a principle by which to live.