I work indoors with oil colours using classical oil paint tubes, oil pastels and various paper types. Since 2020, I have been experimenting with collage or mixed collages with ad-hoc material incorporated.
My art education consists of trial and error since childhood, meeting artists as a collector, visiting hundreds of museums worldwide, and reading art books and biographies. I worked as a high-tech executive and management consultant for 40 years and painted during my spare time. Hence, the styles reflect personal and artistic development spanning several decades. During that period, I travelled to, lived in and immersed myself, parallel to work, in cultures across 40 countries. I needed more time to plan exhibitions or attempt to sell paintings.
- I had one solo exhibition in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2013, at the leading gallery Tengri when I lived in Central Asia and met other artists and gallery owners.
- Since 2019, I have been working from a large studio in a Luxembourg village close to nature, and my work has become more abstract.
- Starting in 2024, I plan to show some of my work to interested collectors and galleries.
I do not know how to describe my artwork, so I am quoting the gallery owner who wrote this piece for the " Dialogues " exhibit. The description covers works up until 2013.
From the Expo Dialogues catalogue
"Karl Lund's broad spectrum of interests, his explorations across various intellectual domains, the experience of extensive travels spanning countries and continents, and his profound cultural curiosity, in essence, all derive from his protean personality. The unique blend of two professional roles - consulting and business design in high-tech, along with engagement in painting, persistent from early childhood - is at the core of Karl Lund's success in life. These realms, while seemingly distant from one another, on a fundamental level, are complementary as constituents of the artist's creative individuality. The development of high technologies builds an enhanced global collaboration system within various spheres of the modern business environment. Similarly, the universal language of art is a versatile tool for facilitating dialogues between different cultures and the unity of human civilisation.
For Karl Lund, the art of painting is a means for self-expression and a creative process of personal and professional fulfilment. However, it is also a delicate "instrument" for studying collective and individual human cultures of various countries, which he was acquainted with during his travels and business career. For example, the artist's "Capitalism in Russia." (2008) is an ironical group portrait of members of a "shady monkey business enterprise amassing initial wealth". The painting symbolically summarises the absurdity of the situations unwillingly witnessed by the Author during the period of his work in Moscow.
"The Last Supper" is an especially noteworthy work: the artist paints the subject twice - in 2009 and 2012, with both paintings being closely similar in their composition - a broken interaction -between the twelve apostles and Christ's semi-figures unified by the consecrated "domain" of the timeless and eternal moment. The words uttered by Jesus in front of his disciples still ringer throughout the ages, readdressed by the artist to his contemporaries.
The first version of the work gives away the artist's emotional immersion in the state of the moment. In contrast, the second demonstrates a more psychologically complex approach to each character's archetypes, reflecting a reality of our modern epoch. The brutal generality of the figures, obtrusive Old Testament symbolics and the poster-like vivid colour of "Adam and Eve." (2007) is another ironic projection of the modernity made by the Author.
Some of Karl Lund's art was born in peculiar dialogues with the legacy of renowned European artists congenial to his worldview ("Young Picasso", 2012, or "Homage to Vincent van Gogh",2012). The artist's recurrent references to the styles of primitivism ("City Life", 2012) or parables ("Icarus and Swans", 2010) allow for achieving emotional freedom and unrestrained self-expression. The paintings of the Kazakhstani period are distinctly characterised by their landscapes and epic narratives ("Horses in the Steppe in Front of Mountains", 2010, "Man on a Horse with an Eagle", 2012). Everchanging interpretations of ancient cultures' pictorial plasticity and visual symbolics are detectable in select works ("Kazakh Woman on a Horse",2012). European modernist aesthetics dominate the artist's creative work, and his traditional technique and genres determine a particular expression model for Karl Lund's painting. Despite the variety of genres, storyline compositions, character portraits, series of still lifes and landscapes, and figurative and metaphoric mythology are all interlaced by the energy of the Author's artistic temperament. Visual culture, creative intuition, sophisticated compositional thought, surprising stylistic juxtaposition, and daring combinations of materials have shaped the artist's unmistakable style and are integral to the depth of his hallmark imageries”.
Statement
Influences
I have been influenced by meeting thousands of working people, friends and artists in societies with very different cultures in Asia, Slavic countries, The Middle East, Europe and the United States. Then, of course, hundreds of schools and painters from the past provided building blocks for creating your style.
Creative Approach
My approach is to reach a state of active meditation where I can capture a wide disparity of artistic impulses and create harmony amongst a chaos of internal and external impressions. Over the years, I have taught myself to optimise the different types of creative processes depending on what I want to achieve and my readiness for the moment. The innovative processes are driven by a desire to combine forms and colours authentically. Moreover, by harmonising these processes, creative calm and joy are maintained. When painting, the spiritual process can guide you and occasionally make you feel like a vessel in tune with other realms.
What does it mean practically?
The creative processes put in motion when creating a piece are dictated by the complexity of the motive and the emerging vision. One very spontaneous process can lead to a rapid result within a few hours for some motives. For other art pieces, the challenge is so vast that it will take weeks or months of multiple sessions before it can reach a point of being completed.
Essentially, this is existential satisfaction when painting, to feel that you are challenging yourself to the best of your abilities while progressing towards something artistically valuable but difficult to capture. And with a result that will touch the viewer's mind and soul in one way or another. That is the ultimate reward.
My inspiration comes from nature, different cultures, other art forms, spirituality and society.