Poppies by Cadenet

Bjorn Runquist

My painting in France over the years stems from having lived in Normandy and Paris for three years when I was a teenager and the many extended stays through my adult life, including painting workshops in the last ten years. I  was always drawn to the age of the landscape:  land that had been worked and lived in for thousands of years.  The villages that seemed to rise from the earth they sat on, made from the stone of that area, producing an inevitable beautiful harmony, always thrilled me.  The fields, trees, and vineyards spoke to me of a long relationship with that land.  The stone fountains at the heart of every provencal village were a testament to a long relationship to the exactitudes of that climate and that land. (The little provencal village Cadenet contains ten  fountains traditionally used to wash clothes in!)  Finally, to have lived where the footsteps of so many great French artists (Monet, Manet, Corot, Cezanne, Van Gogh, etc) still seem fresh in the sand was an irresistible pull. Those artists made people see the world around them and I hoped that my paintings would also help people to see the ordinary of that landscape as luminous and precious.

Cucuron Impasse de L’Abatoire

Bjorn Runquist’s work is currently on display in our Freeport, Maine Showroom. The show, My Other Place: Maine Artists Exploring the World, runs from March 6, 2025 – June 1, 2025.