Style of Painting and Artistic Development

Tommy >TC< Carlsson grew up in a small village in the south of Sweden. Ancestors of his family left the country over 100 years ago as a result of the great famine and emigrated to America. Several years later many of them returned to their homeland, Sweden. The connection to America and the roots in the Swedish home shaped Tommy’s style of painting. During his time at school the Swedish producer Jan Troell shot a part of the epic film version of the novels “Emigrants” and “The New Land” of Vilhelm Moberg in the hometown of Tommy >TC< Carlsson with Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow starring.

In this period of time Tommy started to paint and quickly gained a special expressive power. On the initiative of his teachers he was given a scholarship for his further artistic education. During his education he developed a passion for representational art. The Dutch paintings of the 17th century as well as still lifes were especially interesting for him. This established form of representational art with its traditional artists became a challenge for Tommy and at the same time was the entrance into his own œuvre.

Tommy chose his motifs from his personal environment. Often these were items with notable traces of the course of time, which stand in a special perspective for the viewer through a clever composition of the painting.

Over many years of his first creative period a certain guideline, phrased by Tommy >TC< Carlsson himself, shaped his style of painting: “My still lifes are composed of old objects, which have been affected by the tooth of time for many years. With atmosphere and mysteriousness I am trying to tell you a story. A symbolic painting, free to interpret.”

Works with precise, plane backgrounds emerged, mostly with wooden panels. Subsequently Tommy, in a large number of his works, placed the objects in the foreground and chose free background designs – whilst not using a concrete room situation. The specialty of these works is that the room is only indicated through shadow and light, shine and feebleness on the items themselves or in the direct background of the objects. In this way Tommy created a relationship of tension within his works which inspired many of the lovers of his art.

Stimulated by educational journeys and the participation at various art fairs Tommy increasingly changed the objects in his works and temporarily accentuated the symbolism as well as individual parts of objects. The continuous advancement of his style of painting ultimately led to a complete focussing on the object.

For a number of years the main focus of Tommy >TC< Carlsson has been a style of painting orientated towards trompe-l’oeil. By playing with the deception of cognition, he found new ways of attracting the gaze of his viewers.

Tommy designs this game with a special humour. Behind the directly ascertainable, quasi tangible, figurative reality of his objects, manifold hints and allusions become visible. They enable a contact between the artist and the viewer, an optic interaction. In this way the works of Tommy >TC< Carlsson show a colourful reality, which connects the past, the present and a future-oriented fantasy which makes curious.

Enjoy looking at the picture gallery!

Ellen Lippe