Bjorn Runquist

Björn Runquist was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and immigrated to the U.S. when he was five. He grew up outside of New York City and spent his high school years in France before returning to the U.S. to attend Colgate University. Upon completion of college, Runquist moved to London, England where he received a Master's degree from Kings College, U. of London. He returned to the U.S. four years later and has made Connecticut his home ever since. For the last 27 years, Runquist also calls Clark Island, ME home.

“I am essentially a landscape painter with a significant background in abstract work. What I learned from doing abstract work continues to inform all of my representational work, while the things I choose to paint have changed. My painting typically focuses on the ordinary elements of every day life, from the views familiar to all of us on the coast ofMaineto those views that are most often overlooked: streets inRockland, travels down rt. 131, ice cream store in Port Clyde. I work both as a plein-air artist and from drawings and photos in my studio. The essential thing is to be there, or have been there – feel it, smell it. Painting is really about being fully engaged, fully alive in that moment. There is something so sublimely simple about painting what is right in front of you every day, either literally or metaphorically. Life is always, really, right in front of you.

I have a special fondness forMaine: I’ve been coming here for 28 years, not counting the summers as a child. Mainefeels very much a part of me. Furthermore, there is here such a rich tradition of painting. It is nice to be a part of that. My aim, like some of those artists whose work I admire most, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent and Fairfield Porter, is to ‘create a poetics out of the ordinary’.”

Hide