The landscape

I believe that it is important to be aware that Finn Have´s painting takes its point of departure 
from a simple relationship. An object, most often a landscape, and a canvas is present. The 
painter Finn Have reproduces the landscape on the canvas. With this short description, I just 
wanted to point out that there is a simple structure at the bottom of Finn Have´s painting and it 
is this which makes up the real characteristic of his art, and it is back to this that we will trace 
the many other qualities in his painting. 
As mentioned, Finn Have paints mostly landscapes and therefor his art is based in nature. In 
order for Finn Have to get a painting out of his experience of nature, the immediate experience 
has to be treated with care. Finn Have has to choose a subject, a section of the landscape, that 
goes within the picture's frame. This selection demands a cool head and Finn Have tells me that 
he now and then paints with his back to the subject. Thus he observes his subject in order then 
turn his back on it and begin to paint. As he turns, premeditation gets a place in the painting 
process. A sort of delay occurs.There is a instant, when Finn Have can gather his thoughts, 
collect his impressions, so that they can be united and condensed in the final painting.
I believe that this tension between the immediate and the premeditated is present in a very 
decided way in the painting. If we go very close to one of the Finn Have´s paintings, we see the 
weight of the brushstrokes, the painting. Here Finn Have express the immediate aspect of his 
experience, here there is power and passion, here is the picture's corpus. If we then step a 
couple of paces back, we see the control to which the picture is subject. From a distance one 
experiences the paintings space and perspective, which appears in the way that a horizon or a 
diagonal line appears, making the picture divide into foreground, middle ground and background. 
By in turn going close and then stepping back, we experience Finn Have´s painting precisely in 
the way he experienced the nature which preceded the picture. Finn Have mimics nature in the 
way that he both captures the closeness and intimacy we know from forest path and the width 
and perspective with which we are presented by a range of hills. I believe that the closeness 
shows itself in the painting as a product of Finn Have´s immediate experience of nature and that 
the perspective and space are created with critical premeditation. 
When by way of introduction in maintained that Finn Have´s painting is built upon a simple 
relationship, this does not mean that this art is not complex. Complexity does appear, as Finn 
Have´s does not just reproduce nature on the canvas, but attempts to capture different aspects 
of nature at one and the same time. I have already mentioned the intimate and the perspectival, 
but there is at least one more aspect. Finn Have´s subjects are chosen to make demands on 
the painter. It is rarely a matter of flat, horizontal compositions but hollows in the hills, gorges, 
rivers or forest roads that cut through the landscape. A beguiling tension is thereby created in 
the picture, as, for example, where a river opens up a narrow passage between the hills. Besides 
putting demands upon the painter's compositional abilities, such a subject is seductive. As well 
as the landscapes for which he is best known, Finn have has painted strong erotic compositions. 
Even though this is not immediately apparent, he transfers this eroticism over to his landscapes. 
The watercourse as in "Spring Valley, Andalusia, 1998" or the forest path that winds in the 
manner of Giersing between trees and hills is less innocent than one might believe. In "Valley, 
Andalusia, 1998" nature is full of sweetness and beguilingly erotic. Here Finn Have presents 
nature in a way that makes it interesting to the viewer. 
Of course, other factors than the intimate, the perspectival and the erotic are also present in 
Finn Have´s nature. The point is that all the factors are present simultaneously and that nature 
is therefore more present with Finn Have than in nature itself.
In order to find suitable subjects Finn Have travels a great deal. If we take his pictures as witness 
to his movements, then he is most often in Iceland, in Spain or at home in Odder. The light and 
atmosphere of the various places are expressed by the colour. In the paintings carried out in 
Iceland the colour serves to capture and reproduce a violent, harsh, stony and reserved nature. 
The paintings from Spain and Tenerife reproduce the dryness in the maquis, with a stronger or 
strong sun, preferably in a light and at times warm tone.  Because Finn Have tries to reproduce 
the colours in the place where the painting is executed, the colours in his paintings come from 
nature. However, the coulors belong on the canvas and are therefore marked by the premeditation 
I have already described. Even though Finn Have has been primarily inspired by the colours around 
him, he then has to deal with them and tune them so that they can function in a picture, thus there 
exists a nature, a "landscape" and a "picture". It is Finn Have´s responsibility to put them together 
into a "landscape picture". Thus I would like to point out that what we see and experience in the 
gallery is not nature and landscapes but pictures of them. And these pictures give a greater 
experience of nature than we get in nature itself. When we regard Finn Have´s paintings from, for 
example, Iceland, we do not thus necessatily have to rush up there, but  just be glad that Finn 
Have has been there.
So I end where I started, in the relationship between the landscape and the  canvas, landscape 
and picture. However. I would now like to qualify the simplicity that I maintained was the basis 
of Finn Have´s art. When we look at Finn Have´s pictures, we must not cheat ourselves of a great, 
immediate experience of nature. The light, the coulors, the sure composition show us that Finn 
Have has a feel for experiencing and interceding for nature. However,  we have at the same time 
to enjoy that something is hanging on the gallery walls that is perhaps far greater than nature, 
i.e., art. Finn Have certainly paints landscapes, that's the simple thing, but he does it in such a 
way that art comes out of it.

 (Peter Buhrmann)