On a snowy day, artist Rolf Jansson can look out of his studio window and watch the deer feeding in the woods. His home and studio sit halfway up a mountain in a Norwegian village where families ski together in winter and sail on the fjord in the long twilight of a Scandinavian summer. "Living in a small town in Norway is very nice, very peaceful," he says. "Norway is a very optimistic kind of country." That peace and optimism infuses his colorful compositions. An awardwinning artist whoose work has appeared on everything from Olympic posters to annual reports, Jansson has spent the last decade and a half developing his distinctive style. His work has received wide recognition and has been published in numerous international publications. He was thoroughly presented in the prestigious design magazine GRAPHIS. Although he studied fine art in the late 1960s in Copenhagen, Jansson took the long way around to discover his artistic calling. Caught up in the self-exploration movement in the 1970s, he worked in a variety of positions, including stints as a minister and a merchant seaman (a career cut short by chronic seasickness). And before long Jansson had turned from other pursuits to concentrate entirely on painting ad Illustration. "In the late 1980s there was an explotion in the commercial art scene, with a lot more freedom in the use of art for Illustration," he says. "For me it was a kind of revolution." In his nearly 20-year career, Jansson has taken part in that revolution as well.
Hemisphere (United Airline Inflight-magazine)