Work of rising star Norwegian artist Danny Larsen showcased in Harrogate exhibition

From the Shadows showcases Larsen’s distinctive neo-pointillist style and stippling effect which he uses in the beautiful, atmospheric images he creates, inspired by the rural landscape near his home outside Oslo. The brand-new paintings and drawings, on display for the first time, feature scenes such as woodlands, open water and morning frosts, presenting a sensory duality that Larsen, a former professional snowboarder, describes as “taking the mundane and turning it into magic.” Larsen’s print editions sell out in minutes and collectors are said to be travelling from far and wide to attend the show in Harrogate which follows on from an acclaimed exhibition at the Kittelsen Museum in Norway last year.

Larsen’s work invites the viewer to be present in a meditative moment, to appreciate the here and now and to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. The title of the show, From the Shadows, is significant. “I had struggled with depression my whole life, although I didn’t know what it was for a long time, and because of this I tried to find a way out of it,” Larsen explains. “I started to understand that there is a way you can look at the world around you and force yourself to see the beauty in life. When I was a professional snowboarder, I was travelling all over the world to find these amazing places and all that time there was something beautiful at home, but you ignore it because you have seen it too many times. Once I realised that, I started to look at my immediate surroundings and saw it with new eyes. I call it ‘lazy man art.’”

For Larsen making the transition from professional snowboarder to full-time artist is less of a radical move than it might at first seem. “In the snowboarding industry there is a strong connection with artwork and there are several people from the community who are artists,” he says. “Also, to me snowboarding was never a sport – I felt it was closer to ballet than to skiing. For me it was always about creating images, so my move into art feels like a natural evolution.”

He made the move a few years ago when his wife was pregnant with their first child back in 2014. “I wanted to be at home more and to be doing something that I was as passionate about as snowboarding, but even before that, I had been doing a lot of artwork, it was always something I loved.” As a child, he says, snowboarding and art were his two main interests and it was when he was about the leave high school that he had to make a decision about which to pursue. “I was thinking about maybe going to art school but then I was offered a contract as a snowboarder and I thought that art could be an older person’s profession and that is definitely not the case with snowboarding, so that’s what I did, but I kept up the art – I was always drawing.”

Living in the countryside, on the edge of a forest, he says he finds that he is inspired mostly by what he sees on his daily walks. “I enjoy being outside and exploring. I might take a photograph if I see something special, but the photos are just a framework for the painting, I’m not trying to make a perfect copy. I spend a lot of time recreating the emotions and the atmosphere of the moment. In a way it's more of a painting of myself and how I see the world that particular day.”

He has been working on the new paintings and drawings for the Harrogate show continuously for the past year or so and the detail in his work means that each piece takes quite some time to complete. “It can take me up to six months – there is one painting in the show that I worked on for a year. I paint dot by dot and really try and relive the actual moment that inspired the painting.”

While most of the work in the show captures a quintessentially Scandinavian setting and ambience, two of the paintings on display were inspired by a recent trip to the Yorkshire Dales. “You should be able to look and find beauty everywhere – but it was very easy in the Yorkshire Dales,” says Larsen. “In many ways it looked like home but it felt quite different and some of what I saw was amazing. Two paintings have come out of that so far but there will be more – the Dales landscape definitely spoke to me.”

At RedHouse Originals Gallery, Harrogate, November 26-January 7.