What is your typical day like?
In the morning coffee, and then I read Politiken, the paper issue. In the studio I begin by stirring up the colours. I mix the colours myself from genuine pigments. They set every day, so it’s hard work, but nice when they soften again. Then I start to paint.

Describe your studio.
I have always lived in large flats with high ceilings and a lot of light, so that I could paint in the rooms. But now we live in a flat and I have an old house where I work – and I enjoy walking to my studio and have a private life at home.

How do you spend your time in your studio?
There is a lot of manual work, stretching the linen on to the frames, raking up the colour pigments and priming the linens with 6-8 thin layers of natural glue and special chalk, every time interspersed by periods of drying. Then planning the pictures with a colour scale, motif and composition. But, with all this done, I simply go on and paint. So, my days are divided into different periods where I do different things.

What inspires you?
Spain does. I have travelled and sketched there since 1984, and still do. I most often work with colour theory, doing colour circles and inscribing the ones I see – for example at the hugely inspiring fish markets - in those circles. But I also draw a lot of inspiration from the works of the Spanish artists on display in the large museums in Madrid and Barcelona.

What shaped you as an artist? Where did it all start? Was there art in your childhood?
My mother sketched and painted, and we three children sat as models all through our childhood. She also did commissioned work, portraits, and we had to judge whether the likeness was good. Afterwards I was given the leftover oil paint and small pieces of linen to make my own pictures.

Did you have a formal artistic education? If so, where and how much did it make a mark on the artist you are today? If not, do you ever wish that you had been to art school?

I went to the Kunsthåndværkerskolen (School of Handicraft) for five years, and then made sketches of classical art for two years at the Glyptotek. Then six years at the Academy for Fine Arts in Copenhagen, ending with two years of theory of education at the same place. My education has meant a lot to me. I was taught all the basic principles, so that after the Academy I had something to break away from and then return to. On study trips we visited all the great cities of Europe, and experiencing all this with fellow students means that I have had colleagues and friends all through my life as a Danish artist.

Does your home country or the place where you live influence your art?
At the Academy I spent several years at the School of Graphics and learned to love the older lithographic artists who worked from direct observation in the then rather black-and-white Copenhagen. I copied that, and use the method when I travel outside Denmark. In Spain they say that my art, even if the motifs are Spanish, seems very Nordic.

Where do your ideas come from? How do you hold on to and record your ideas? How do you develop them into art?
I use my sketches from Spain as inspiration for my paintings, and I have a lot of sketches, all in the same size. To me they are like notes for music. When I look at them, I remember the colours, the sounds, what I thought. And from there on I can use my education. At the School of Handicraft, for instance, I had a German teacher who herself had been educated at the Bauhaus School in Weimar, where composition was an important theme, and I can use her teachings in my paintings.

When you start a new work or project, do you plan what you are going to create or do you improvise?
I do a lot of planning, write notes, do colour scales, composition, content. But when the large frames with their flax linen are ready, prepared with all the thin layers of priming, the studio is completely in order, the brushes are clean, then the strange thing happens: the pictures take over, and start to decide almost everything themselves. We are two, the picture and I. Everything is chaos, and I am so surprised when I see the finished painting.

Can you tell us a little more about what you are currently doing? What techniques are you working with? Are there very specific ideas that you are trying to explore in your work?
I work with the classic renaissance technique, I use exactly the same materials that Diego Velázquez used in the 17th century, and that Joan Miró used in the 20th. It is inexhaustible in its simple ingredients, and the more exciting the more I stretch them out into every extreme.

Do you enjoy reading? If so, what kind of books? What are you currently reading?
I am always reading and have been doing it ever since I learned how, in order to learn how other people think. I could not live without it.

Do you listen to music? If so what? Do you listen to music when you work?
If I feel like fooling around a little in the studio I listen to Anne Linnet. I simply love her texts.

Do you have any hobbies? What do you do to relax when not working?
I am not a collector but I love to find old and used quality-stuff. It can be clothes, furniture or crockery, as long as it is well made, original, and I can imagine where it comes from and how it has been used

Who are your favourite artists – past and present? Why?
Spanish artists, the new young ones too. But I love all good art in general, my favourite type is the one where the artist has put their heart into it.

Do you collect art? If so, describe some of your favourite works.
No, I don’t collect art, since I haven’t had much room for it because we have always lived and worked under the same roof. But now it annoys me that I haven’t been collecting. It would have been wonderful to have a collection for inspiration.

Do you enjoy travelling? Where have you travelled to? Has that influenced your work?
I have been travelling a lot since I have been working so much in Spain and have stayed there for long periods.

Do you think art has an important role to play in the world?
Art is incredibly important. I do a lot of ornamentation projects, both in public and in private rooms, and it is really surprising every time to see how the room changes completely when the art is installed. The whole process is very inspiring: the cooperation with the building owner, the architects, other artists, the naked room or even just the hole in the ground. And then afterwards the response from around you, from those who use the rooms daily. People are generally happy to be surrounded by art.