DRACHMANN'S HOUSE

Since I was six years old, I have visited Skagen every year. My memories of the many visits to my grandparents are wonderful. The walks by the rushing winter sea, the dunes, the trips to the museums, the fishmonger, Butcher Munch and not least Bakery Krage, who every year probably baked us the most delicious cake called "fragilité".

Many of us recall Skagen as a very special place with an incomparable aura and atmosphere. Everyone talks about the light and the colors of Skagen and describes it as a very magical place in Denmark. No wonder Skagen housed a significant artist colony from the latter half of the 19th century. With this assembly of talented artists, Skagen was put on the map, and whose legacy is still left in the city. One of the many joys we can appreciate today is to visit the painter, poet and womanizer Holger Drachmann's House - Villa Pax. The house is located in a beautiful garden in what once was then the outskirts of Skagen's plantation, and it contains in a way the essence of the artist's free and very often a quite untraditional life - in many facets.

In 2010 I was called up by curator Kurt Nedergaard, who asked if I could produce the colors for Drachmann's House in connection with a huge restoration project. I felt it as a major honor to be invovled in this project and I was sold right away and threw myself with the greatest joy into the task.

"I felt it as a major honor to

be invovled in this project and I was sold right away"

Drachmann was a colorful personality, and his house stands as if he had just left it with French faience on the table and with his characteristic wide-brimmed hats and capes still hanging in the entrance. It feels like stepping inside a lived life. The original colors should emphasize and maintain this authenticity - as well as take good care of the old white half-timbered house. 

Before the colors for the restoration project could be mixed, they first had to be grinded on the roller; I mixed them with extra care, for they should be worthy of an artist; an artist with a sense of colour, love and the art of living.

"With my fingers, I made a
stripe of each color, as a reminder of this particular task"

Before the colors were sent away, they were immortalized on the door until my first mixing room. With my fingers, I made a stripe of each color, as a reminder of this particular task. When I sold the house a few years later, I could not bear to paint the door over, as it also contains colors from many other speciel projects. Fortunately, the new owners fell so in love with the door that they left it as it is and today it still stands perfectly with all my color memories.