ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is oriented towards humanity and how painting can reveal something about human identity, nature and history. In that both of my parents were orphans and grew up without family, I found myself early on in my life looking for roots and the sense of belonging. The secrets around my unknown relatives, their lives and persona made me look for stories behind the random faces staring at me from photographs. The human gaze became my inspiration and a way into representative painting.

My identity as a painter is located between figuration and abstraction. The human expression in dialog with the complexity of a painted surface has been a conceptual cornerstone for most of my career as an artist. The motifs in my pantings are taken from different sources, such as private familiealbums, newspapers, films or the internet.

When the mystery of a human image merges with the abstract poetry of painting, new and untold stories arise beyond the visible surface. In the context of our contemporary mass communication my commitment to the visual language of paint serves for me as a way to silence the mind and comprehend questions about life and humanity. The viewer does nor only perceive an immediate visual experience, but is also left to process the complexity of mankind in a frozen moment in time.
I think of the way I work as a love affair, a place fed from human nature, unfolded by paint.

Charlotte Engelhaart is best known as a painter, but her work also includes video installation. She studied at The National Academy of Fine Art in Bergen Norway from 1996-2001.
Her works have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums in Norway as well as in Europe and belong to numerous public, corporate and private collections. Engelhaart lives and work at Nesodden, just outside of Oslo

She is a member of several artist organizations: NBK, UKS and LNM.