Edvard Munch on Anxiety as Inspiration

Edvard Munch, like French painter Paul Cezanne was imbued with an intense passion for life that also had a darker side. This intense personality is reflected in his yearning to create works that were passionate, not mere droll subject matter. His expressionistic, dark, and unique style was not only radical but very influential. The underlying emotion so prominent in his work is also reflected in this quote from Munch:

"My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Somtimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm's edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss. For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art. Without anxiety and illness I should have been like a ship without a rudder."

-Edvard Munch (1863 -1944)

Edvard Munch 'Self-Portrait' 1882

Edvard Munch on Color, Line, and Form

Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was stylistically ahead of his time. He was a print-maker, a symbolist painter, and an influence in the development of German Expressionism, a style I feel especially drawn towards. I love the following quote, because emphasis on line and vibration or flow of those lines (for lack of better words) are elements I use in my work.

"By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. "

-Edvard Munch (1863 -1944)

I like the way he used color and line forms to define moods in his work. It's easy to call someone like French painter Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) a forefather of modern art, but Munch played a prime and vital role in that development also. The self-portrait below is a prime example; you will be hard pressed to find a painting from 1895 with that much expressionistic color, texture, and overall mysterious feel.

Edvard Munch, Self Portrait with Cigarette, 1895