A curvy figure lies back in the golden wheat. The flowers are singing. You can hear the wind blowing. Sawing through the grass. Above this snake-like figure a black panther appears with his mouth wide open. We recognise the predator. But it feels like there is no threat. The clothes seem to disappear into the fields. In the flowers and the wheat. Predator and prey. All in union in this world. None of this could exist in the visible world as we know it. I love these contradictions.

Candy For Crocodiles, my third solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, is about the escape the candy offers and the clock that keeps ticking. The fear of time, and surrendering to something more timeless. A life between heaven, fantasy and earth. The good, the bad and the ugly.

I was eight years old, standing in the local sweet shop. I had been sent there to be distracted. I chose a bag of sour saucers. They had these bright, artificial colours and looked tasty. I took one out and put it in my mouth. But it wasn’t that sweet. It tasted sharp and strange. It was the last time I would have this sour candy. Somewhere that day, death had entered our family.

I did not understand it yet. It was so quiet in the house, you could hear the loud noise of the clock in the living room. That night, before bed, I opened a children’s Bible, looking for answers.

While I was reading I could not find any answers. But before I went to sleep they slowly came to life. In my head. I got myself into a world of pure light. It came in colours I can hardly describe. The animals were not hunting. The people were not hiding. There was music everywhere in this world. But not the kind of music we know of humans. It was a beauty that exceeds all art ever made. And I have been trying to make images of this world ever since. Even unconsciously.

There is a danger inside me. A danger when longing for heaven becomes a flight in fantasy. A flight from life itself, from everything that is ugly and unpleasant. That is where the crocodile comes in.

The fantasy world in Peter Pan, Neverland, is very recognisable to me. For a long time I thought I was Peter Pan. In Neverland time stops, and I could stay a child forever, never having to think too far ahead. But all this time, I turned out to be Captain Hook. Because there was a threat. A real-time predator called Tic-Toc, the crocodile chasing the flamboyant captain. He was the ticking clock in the background. In the background, but ever so loud.

I cannot run from that ticking forever. When I put away my phone, the screens, all the noise I fill my days with, the ticking of the clock is what remains. And instead of fleeing it, I just try to stay. I sit in the silence. The way you sit with someone you love without needing to speak. It feels like forever. But this is not a flight into fantasy. It is being present, with the people who matter most.

I am very inspired by Saint John of the Cross, one of the Carmelite mystics. For him, love was not a transaction. He did not pray to get something in return, but simply to spend time with the one he loved.

For me, art does not give answers. It does not explain life. In an almost medieval sense, I believe art is a window. It does not define, it directs. It moves us, towards love, towards the good, towards the beautiful. That is what the eight-year-old was looking for, that night with his Bible. I am still looking.