About me

My name is Pär Westling and I am an artist and painter.

I have worked with images and painting for as long as I can remember. My mother attended Konstfack – the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm – so I assume she gave me a crayon as soon as I could use my hands.

All my painting is primarily founded on my own experimentation, and on discussions with artist friends and clients. My main form of expression is freely non-figurative and abstract painting. I always work with expressionism, which is to say ideas, visions, concepts, thoughts and emotions that come directly from within. I describe my creation as completely free, without external impulses or relation to the wider world, although it is of course impossible to completely escape one’s immediate surroundings and the outside world. It is quite simply a passion for my own, unique expression that I am cultivating. I work in tandem with my own electronic music composition, assisted by computers, synthesizers, my own voice and so on. I have been involved with this musical form for almost 20 years. My aim when working with music is to gain some distance from the painting, although the music simultaneously corresponds with the painting, which is natural.

My favourite works include a series of paintings from recent years: a suite of 20 large paintings of 250 x 120 cm. Otherwise I work in a wide range of sizes, from miniature and upwards.

My life

I have completed nine years of compulsory education, a three-year Social Sciences programme at high school, and am a trained NCO in the Swedish Armed Forces. I have worked at a firm of architects, and at Skanska house construction as an administrative assistant. I have also completed various free-standing courses at university, including religion and theology. Some of the art courses I have done are: Kyrkerud Image & Design, Falkenberg Art School, Stockholm International Art School, NTI (Nordic Engineering Institute, correspondence courses) and the Kyrkerud Art Project programme. In tandem with this I have worked on my own art, primarily painting, and have often exhibited in Sweden at different types of art gallery.

Over the past 12 years I have focused particularly on my painting, working from my home studio in Karlstad. I also worked as a consultant for Värmland County Council for seven years, in outpatient psychiatry. My wife, Karin Westling, is also an active artist. A mental life crisis in my early thirties proved ultimately to be an enriching, rather than a destructive, experience. It quite simply enabled me to become a better person, subjectively speaking.