Time Softens – On Slipping and Holding 1

In her latest body of work, Astri Styrkestad Haukaas considers landscape as a site of gentle shift—where time loosens, form softens, and the ground offers quiet permission to pause. Rather than depicting literal places, her paintings draw from rivers, slopes, folds of earth, and drifting light as ways of thinking and feeling. These terrains mirror internal movements of memory, instinct, and emotion, offering steadiness without insisting on meaning. The works remain open-ended, attentive to moments of belonging that surface without explanation.

Haukaas’ process moves between intention and surrender. Ink slips and finds its own paths, while oil slows and anchors the surface, creating a rhythm between holding and release. Time feels layered within these paintings—personal, collective, and geological—pressing upward through form and color. Some works expand with light, while others fold inward with density and vibration, reflecting the nonlinear movement of thought. Together, the series invites viewers into a space between form and dissolution, where memory, perception, and presence unfold at their own pace.