A bit about me:
My name is Annette (Antoanette) Birkenborg. I was born in Kosovo, and that is where I spent the first 16 years of my life.
I subsequently lived in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and have been living in Sweden since 1986.
Now I live and work in beautiful Ystad, which provides me plenty of inspiration for my creativity.
I cannot quite remember when I first became interested in being creative, but my school books were full of sketches I drew, mostly faces and buildings but also birds and eyes that now appear often in my paintings.
Several times a week I visited a studio in the neighbourhood that was run by a friend of my father.
How fascinated I was by all the paints and brushes! It was like stepping into a fairy tale... That is where the fundamentals of painting and the magic of colour were created. In addition to painting, I am also interested in other crafts such as textiles, clay etc.
I was really interested in technical drawing in my teenage years, but I never became an architect. I chose to work with people and that is what I am happy doing.
When I paint, I get that inner need to depart from reality and disappear into another world. A world of experiences, dreams and emotions that separates me from what surrounds me at that moment, and the more layers of paint the hands and brush apply to the canvas, the further away from reality I get.
I merge into the creative process and it feels like my body and soul are divided. The soul goes on an exploration ‒ searching, longing, loss, pleasure, fantasy and more ‒ while my hands pave the way there with colour after colour, until the inner me explodes smiling in the harmony of colours.
Freedom is a holy word for me, and I find it difficult to tie myself to one particular style of creativity, which is apparent in the assortment of pictures.
My art is a piece of me and my emotions that I am happy to share with others, and I hope that I can stir up emotions and thoughts, perhaps a longing for something or just spark the imagination of the viewer.