Twenty years ago, Annica Hallman contracted the disease ME – a neurological disease that causes chronic fatigue. Through her art, she wants to express strength and power.
Annica Hallman is a Swedish artist. Born in Gothenburg, the second largest city in the country, she still lives and works there. She has taken several art courses and attended a one-year art school, and painting is her greatest passion. Music gets her creativity going and makes her right hemisphere connect to the artistic process. She paints abstract figurative paintings and the motifs are often women.
“I am fascinated by eyes, they are perfect for expressing emotions. When you look into the eye, you see the soul, and you can look around among all the forms to get a moment of stillness.”
At the birth of her second child, Annica contracted the disease ME – myalgic encephalomyelitis, a severe neurological multisystem disease characterized by chronic fatigue.
“I struggled with different ways to recover my health. I have lived a healthy and secluded life and now, more than 20 years later, my children are grown up and I have been given a new opportunity to start painting for real, something I have longed for and waited for all my life. You have to use your talent and get a good life through it.”
Annica prefers to paint at dawn. The disease makes her tired early in the evening, so she gets up at 3 am.
“It is so calm then and I am well rested. The process starts with a thought, a feeling, then I always begin with the eyes. I turn on music and start painting and the inspiration is magical when it comes. After that, the colors and shapes speak to me and form a harmony, and it is as if the painting creates itself.”
For Annica Hallman, art is a way of expressing what she cannot bring out in her own life. When the feelings of fatigue are present, painting becomes an outlet of the other emotions; the powerful and life-affirming.
“I have managed to get far but I have to plan my life carefully. With my art I want to express the opposite, not weakness, but strength and power. Through painting, I can bring it out even though it’s not always what I feel in real life. I want to focus on the positive, and right now it is that I can paint, so my motifs must be hopeful and strengthening.”
The inspiration comes both from the inside and from the outside. Annica likes to have a spiritual perspective on the process and during her spiritual search she contacted several mediums. They discovered that she had an artistic signum.
“There are different levels of consciousness behind a process that we can not really explain. We must not forget that we don’t know much about life, we do not have the whole truth. It is a reason for spiritual awakening.”
For Annica, it led to an out-of-body experience. It happened when she felt the most exhausted, ad she experienced for a moment that she was outside her own body.
“One morning, when I woke up, I was very weak. I was conscious, but my body was not awake. Then I felt an energy over my forehead. I experienced it as very positive, and in the next second I felt how I let go of my body and slid out through the wall. I hung out outside the house and was no longer Annica, but just this energy outside my body. Later, I woke up in my body and was completely euphoric. It was incredible to experience this, and I understood that there are energies that we have not fully understood.”
The medium that Annica visited could also see past lives that had preceded her own.
“One life was in the 18th century. They then saw that I was a portrait painter in Paris. In another, I was an apprentice to Leonardo DaVinci himself. According to the medium, I have been involved in painting his works, because that was what you did as an apprentice at the time. Who knows? You can believe what you want, but it’s a wonderful story.”
In the autumn of 2021, Annica had an exhibition at the Milan Biennale. The art critic Salvo Nugnes wrote the following words about her art:
“Annica Hallman’s love for art was at first sight and she gifts her audience intense images, which hold captivating emotions. The artist skillfully searches for simplicity, whilst conferring elegance to the expressions of the depicted subjects, through soft but confident brush strokes. Talented and passionate, she creates a deep connection with the observer, who perfectly perceives her great sensitivity and kindness.”
Annica has had several exhibitions in Italy and still has four paintings hanging there. She also has contact with a Swiss gallery with the hope of being able to sell her art through it. At the same time, she is active on instagram and facebook and has been discovered by an instagram account called ”arcitectureart64” with which she collaborates. In this way, she reaches out with her art and can get in touch with artists from all over the world. She is optimistic about the future.
“It is absolutely fantastic and great fun. This whole life experience, with highs and lows, has made me a better artist. I see no challenges with my painting, I only see opportunities.”
Se more art in Annica’s portfolio at Artportable
