Christian Poignant

With nature as starting point and a strong connection to water, sea and coast Christian Poignant creates his artworks in the borderline between the abstract and the figurative.
The artworks often consist of segments of shape where encounters and reflections, light, air and contrast are of great importance.
The artist’s childhood by the Swedish eastern archipelago characterized by the fishermen, fishing and boats, cliffs and slabs and has made great impressions in the artist’s awareness.
The inspiration to his artworks, Poignant takes from his long kayak excursions along the Swedish east coast;

“The paddling gives a directness and closeness to the sea, water and nature and an exposure to different weathers with sudden changes.
Here I find the colours and shapes which I use in my painting. Smooth cliff slabs, crevasses in the rock, rainwater with brilliantly green algae, bird droppings and intense yellow lichens on the cliffs etches in my memory. And the weather, the clouds, the reflections, inconstancies.“

In his studio Poignant allows the paintings to develop from a dynamic process where memory images and visions from the kayak excursions blends with the course of labour and where a painting can always find a new way.
Poignant mostly uses panel for his oil paintings which, with its hard and smooth surface through scraping and processing, enables new patterns when the underlying layers of paint are revealed.

“I always work with a large number of paintings at the same time which can be left to ‘mature’ before they return into the center of process.”

Christian Poignant, born 1955, lives in Stockholm where his studio is located.
The creative process also takes place in Rosenfors’ station house in Småland, where Poignant together with his wife artist Gunilla Poignant has converted the old wait hall and ticket office into summer studios.
Towards the end of the 1970’s and during the 1980’s Poignant attended art studies at Gerleborg school and Konstfack (University of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm.
Since the mid 1980’s Poignant has participated in a large number of both solo and group exhibitions around Sweden and has also partaken in art fairs such as ‘Stockholm Art Fair’ and ‘Affordable Art Fair Stockholm’.
Poignant’s artworks are represented at Statens Konstråd, Stockholms Kommun, Stockholms Landsting, Uppsala Kommun, Kalmar Kommun, among others, and in 2008 he performed a public commission for Danderyd Hospital.
In 2011 Poignant received (among other scholarships through the years) the Vistelsestipendium (Sojourn Scholarship) from Scholarship of Ålands Landskaps Regering, allowing the artist an incredibly inspiring two week stay in the southern archipelago of Kökars.