There is definitely something about the cadence of someone's voice. At the crowded poolside bar at the Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach, on a gorgeous night when the Art Basel art fair had taken over the city, Per Adolfsen's urgent yet mellifluous Danish tone broke through the din. There had been some drinks consumed, surely, that fueled his passionate outcries, but it was obvious from the moment my friend Miok and I met him that Mr. Adolfsen was a force. Honesty is always powerful. The same tone showed through in the art we saw of our new friend's the next day, and in all the art I've seen of his over the last 10 years since we met as strangers in Miami. Recently, having seen some new work, some haunting sketches of nature, I reached out to say how much I loved them. Turns out I am not alone. My friend has garnered quite the following for his so-true renderings of nature.
Why? Of course, he doesn't know for sure why they are so popular but he posits, "People see in them the emotions of life, they see themselves, they don't see the trees."
I said to Per during our chat that I've always found sketches so revealing of an artist.
"It's like brain to paper," I said. And he amended: "Soul to paper..." he said. He talked about how, during a fallow period of art making, he began to teach. But, he said, "I didn't teach them art. I taught them to see." His art teaches all of us to see that thing we so often forget to notice: we are nature. Listen in, and keep track of this great artist's trajectory.
Per's work is represented by 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel in NYC. You can find him on Instagram @peradolfsen_artist or on https://www.facebook.com/per.adolfsen