My old paintshelf in 2003-2004 This where my day start; deciding which colours to put on my palette. The names may seem strange to untrained eye: "Burnt Umber, Paris Blue, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red-Light, Zink White, Hookers Green (my favorite), and Indian Yellow Brown Lake Extra", just to mention a few.

Moss Avis photo, 2002 Photo: Geir Hansen, Moss Avis A year or so after started painting, a large article was written about me in Moss Avis called "Thought I was Superman", in relation to my burn out and severe depression. The article focused on how many young people suffer from "stress syndromes" at work and hit the wall. In the article I stressed the fact that many hit the wall and make it back, but some slip into a deep depression which is an entirely different story. The article stirred quite the fuss and people even stopped me in the store and such and thanked me, saying they also had people in their family's struggling but never knew what to think. I mostly responded it was an individual thing. The article as the picture shows, also focused on my art which had become my main tool in helping me survive the ordeal. These were dark years. But I still look different in this picture from now; untouched by years of anti-depressants, weight gain and other side-effects, hospitalizations and terrible angst. What happened? is my main thought looking at it. The painting behind me in this photo, now owned by Kristian Svendsen in Oslo, was perhaps predicting the future. "A lesser light," it's called, living in the gaze of the moon rather than the sun.

Moss Avis photo 2002 Photo: Geir Hansen The second photo of three in the doubble-page article about burn-out depression and art. Here I show two of my first paintings. The first called "Depression Prayer" and is featured in "oil paintings" on this site--a near abstract expression of the pain I was going through at the time. The second--a far more figurative work, was painted in the lapse of a few days when I felt a brief pause in the tense emotional agany; thus adding a stripe of yellow in the darkness. I called it "A glimpse of hope" and it is now owened by my dad.