Peter Bak’s art is surely strong and intense, with deep suggestions born of the intimate dialogue between the chromatic vibrations and the pictorial gestures that obviously stand out as its main features. Nature, with its elements and landscapes, stirs some fervent passion in this Danish artist, yet it is not transferred onto canvas through representation. Instead, it actually becomes an excuse to develop a type of painting that intentionally dissolves – as the work progresses – the initial inspiration, to give way to chromatic impetus and to the emotion of light exalting every detail of the painted surface. Of the natural elements, only vague, suffused traces remain, like melancholic sweetness emerging from the rhythm evoked – with purely abstract effects of vital energy – by light and colour. An existential mixture of nature and life thus conquers the canvas, generating a strong emotive surge and enveloping the spectator in an intimate, all-pervading union.
His pictures, very powerful and refined, always have a strong visual impact: his art does not record images but communicates emotions. The hand following the free creative flow is guided by a mind producing immediate intuitions, impulses, memories, impressions from travels. This mind can dream and at the same time be attentive of and attracted to nature, of which it can grasp the suggestive landscapes and, especially, the fully-fledged powers.
This artist, unpredictable in his pictorial creations, shuns all bonds, when composing. He proceeds by balancing dynamic tensions implying a rich spiritual dimension and his great passion for pure abstraction, in which colour is invaded by the intensity of light. Light, through sudden transparencies or outbursts, conveys vibrant poetic and existential echoes. Stroke after stroke, Bak paints his works – including his ‘Beginning’ featured in ‘Liberated Dreams’ – by following his own inner pace and giving life to compositions in which the individual stroke, the vivid colours and the pictorial gesture cooperate in harmony.
In front of his paintings, the spectator is invited to step onto paths unfolding in his inner world – including his fantasy world – as he feels the growing and irresistible need to discover the thoughts, dreams and feelings shaped by the hand of this artist. He indeed feels the invitation to look for what is implied, to explore it through his own imagination, because the artist, with his skills and intuitions, when transferring his intimate thoughts and impulses onto the canvas, only uncovered traces of it, leaving it to the fantasy of those giving in to the artwork’s appeal to grasp it.
Paola Trevisan, Art curator, Trevisan International Art