104 | Issue 115 | August 2018
Art with an inner light
By Alyssa Nilsen
Artist of the month, Norway
Controversial but popular painter Dag Hol has never been one to hide in the shad-
ows. Going against the current and ever-changing fashions in art, he creates mag-
nificent landscapes inspired by romanticism and old painting techniques. This has
earned him some of the biggest crowds recorded at exhibitions in Norway, but also a
reputation as the ‘odd one out’ amongst the art elite in his native country.
Hol did his first drawing at the tender age
of six — a piece that has since gone miss-
ing, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it was
good enough to light a spark in the young
boy, and, as a teenager, he would strap
his easel to his back and head out into
the woods to paint the surrounding land-
scapes. In his late teens, he was intro-
duced to Acem meditation. He pondered
moving to India to become a yogi, but
realised that he could practice and learn
locally — that it was not so much about
where he was, as about what he did.He went on to study languages, litera-
ture and art, and finds that the philos-
ophy that was a part of these studies
has helped his understanding of art and
art history. “Languages, art, philosophy,
meditation — all these different things
have melted into one big interest,” he
says. “They’re all connected.”The close relationship between med-
itation and creation is something that
is completely intrinsic to Hol’s life and
work. It is not at all religious, but some-
thing all-encompassing that affects life,
love and his art. “I’ve been meditating
for 46 years,” he says, “so I’m quite ad-
vanced. When I meditate, I can often do
up to 30 or 50 hours in one sitting. The
things you work with at that point tran-
scend normal emotional presence and
turn into something more timeless. And
that has affected my painting a lot.”He describes the process of painting
a picture as a combination of medita-
tion, philosophy and psychology. He will
sit still for hours, spending the same
amount of time thinking and reflecting