A painting on your life

Swedish artist Asa Halldin can draw your life story after a chat with you

IF ISAAC Mendez from the television drama Heroes and Emraan Hashmi in Raaz - The Mystery Continues can paint the future then 37-year-old Swedish artist Asa Halldin can paint your present state of mind.



"I don't have the ability to draw the future and don't want to tell people about it also, because then they would be very strict and not go with the flow," she laughs.

You talk to her about your life, desires and wants and she paints a depiction, ink on paper, just under 10 minutes. "I do not want to struggle for my inspiration. It comes to me out of the blue," says Halldin between sips of coffee. "I listen to other people and their stories. My inspiration also comes from what they want me to do," she says, emphasising that the best art is born when you are free in spirit.

Halldin, who studied jewellery designing, says, "While I was in art school I had a professor who knew everything before he began working colour, measurement, design. But when I used to work on a piece, in the beginning I would want to throw it away but later it would become my masterpiece."

Does listening to people pour their innermost feelings to her make her a counselor at some level? "I believe so. I listen to the person's story but do not judge them." And people do tend to see themselves in a different light after viewing their life through Halldin's paintings. Halldin believes that people are afraid of art because it triggers something in them that they are not aware off.

Surely drawing other people's lives might have helped put hers into perspective. But Halldin thinks long and hard about how she would depict her life. "I am a very free and happy person... I really cannot picture it (her own life's painting)," she finally says.

When we ask her to sign a painting of hers, she hesitates, saying, "Then I would become bigger than the painting." But finally relents and we are now proud owners of an autographed Asa Kristine Halldin painting depicting our life.

Halldin's art exhibition is on at Out of the Blue, Bandra from January 20-30. She will paint for guests free of charge on Tuesdays