The Lofoten Painters
Permanent Exhibition

A painted waterfall cannot be used for anything other than to look at and admire. This led to people gradually considering waterfalls as phenomena with their own intrinsic value, without any thought of their potential usage. In short, waterfalls thus became an aesthetic phenomenon, and that is what has been the reasoning behind the various campaigns to save waterfalls that local and national authorities have wanted to develop for industrial purposes.
In this respect, art has far greater significance than one might imagine, and this also applies to paintings of Lofoten. The tourist industry which today is almost as lucrative for Lofoten as the fisheries, is primarily a result of the fact that the entire region has become aesthetically attractive due to the many paintings that have promoted its magnificent scenery – from Otto Sinding to Einar Berger. But there are also more recent examples, too, like the Swedish watercolour painter, Lars Lerin (1954 -) who, by way of his paintings of Lofoten, where he lived for no less than 12 years, has given us a completely different impression and a different understanding of this landscape. .