An interview with Dossier who came by the studio to talk all things painting;

I start my process by painting all sorts of different ideas for motifs on paper. I’m not sensitive about printer paper, it’s easier to throw away than a canvas. I’m most comfortable when I’m painting on paper. Then I make easy decisions. I take the drawings I like and imagine where they should be placed in relation to each other in a large painting. How they fit together in terms of colours and shapes.

Before I even start on the motifs on the canvas, I mix beeswax into the white paint and paint a thick layer on the canvas so it looks old and dry. It gets pretty rough. The first five days I don't paint anything figurative, it's just about throwing a lot of colours on the canvas. Get the colours to work together and blend with the white colour. I keep going until I feel like I have a finished corner. It could be green, over white, over blue with orange on it. Now I can paint a face.

My method goes completely against the traditional way of making a portrait. There you would start with a line drawing and gradually add more and more details to the face. Lay light and shadows on. Here I paint a face quickly, and I paint it late in the process. I don't need to make shadows or light, because the many layers of colour add play and texture to my subjects. I make a lot of mistakes when I paint the figurative. I paint it over and over and over again. But that creates the work, and makes it very tactile. Layer upon layer. Story after story. Only I know the story behind the development of the work, but it makes me believe much more in the qualities of the work.

I am completely obsessed with these British ceramic sculptures from the 19th century. They are very iconic in England. It is a bit like Royal Copenhagen in Denmark. I am always on the hunt for new figures. Many people think I am strange, but I have a thing for ceramics. I zoom in on the figures and paint details from them on my works. Repeating the motifs over and over again, so that half of a figure’s face ends up on the work. That is the starting point for most of my works.

Dossier, published by Elle Danmark with former Euroman profile Kasper Steenbach as editor. The magazine focuses on culture, lifestyle and fashion material in an exclusive and masculine universe.

Interview with Ditlev Fejerskov

Photography by Kavian Borhani