Stefán Boulter Paintings

paintings

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SURVIVING MODERNITY The Painting of Stefán Boulter Icelandic art of the 20th century is very much an art of certainties. It does not admit of many doubts as to the make-up of the world. It is seen as solid, essentially simple , sometimes psychologically complex yet ultimately knowable through a progressive development we call Modernism. In this Icelandic art is both of itself and of its time, exhibiting the pragmatism borne of centuries of hardscrabble living and Modernism´s distrust of mysteries and ambiguities.

Thus, Stefán Boulter‘s art can hardly be called typically Icelandic. For it is very much about uncertainties, doubts and the ultimately unfathomable aspects of even our simplest actions. The seemingly inconsequental gestures of his sitters, a subtle turn of the head or the placement of a hand, become pregnant with things unsaid or implied. As to Stefán Boulter´s still-lifes of things transparent: drinking glasses, bowls or vases, they take on the aura of sacred relics that are both of this world and out of it.

Indeed, this capacity for double focus is very much the cornerstone of Stefán Boulter‘s philosophy of art. A 21st century artist, he is on record as saying that he would like to „get out of modernity“.Working in the here and now on the depiction of tangible objects or living and breathing persons in front of him, he strives to arrest time and express eternal values.

Ideally, Stefán Boulter would like to operate in the spaces between extremes such as „light“ and „dark“, „softness“ and „roughness“, „male“ and „female“. Likewise, in his canon of artists and thinkers we find the selflessness of Krishnamurti paired with the self-interest of Ayn Rand, the joie-de-vivre of Renoir discussed in the same breath as the violent distortion and mysticism of El Greco. Between these two poles there exists a still „centre“ where Stefán Boulter hopes to find the „truth“ and the „key to creativity“, no less.

But then Stefán Boulter himself embodies the double focus, being the offspring of a father from Kentucky and an Icelandic mother. A sensitive child, he grew up with an awareness of the „other“, an everpresent parallel reality with its own values and vicissitudes. And perhaps Jean Genet was right when he said that to create was always to speak about childhood.

But instead of fragmenting his artistic vision, Stefán Boulter‘s parallel lives have imbued him with an infallible survival technique, namely the ability to understand that, to paraphrase W.H. Auden, all absolutes are heretical yet necessary in a given circumstance, that scepticism doesn´t have to lead to despair, that we are weak but not helpless and that perfection is impossible but one can be or do better or worse.

It is a technique that will stand him in good stead in his continuing search for purpose and value through painting.

Adalsteinn Ingolfsson

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stefanboulter.com Š stefån boulter

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Helga in black 105x110 2006

Helga in white 103x110 2006 issuuprufa.indd 5

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Fish in a bowl 45x45 2006

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Stein 30x29 2007

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MarĂ­n 28x32 2007

Lilly 55x60 2006 issuuprufa.indd 9

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White bowl 47x56 2005

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Trout 35x30 2006

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Gudrun 115x95 2008 issuuprufa.indd 14

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Rose 35x30 2006

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Hertha 36x30 2007

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Velvet 30x35 2007

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Blue jug 45x45 2005

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