Richard Solstjärna is a Swedish abstract artist based in Berlin. His work doesn’t just sit on the surface. It digs deep—into the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical layers of being. The paintings aren’t meant to decorate a room. They’re meant to stir something, to open a door into what we often overlook. Solstjärna speaks of energy and unseen forces—what pulses underneath the noise of daily life. His process leans into that silence, that void, where form begins to take shape. What emerges isn’t fixed or calm. It’s always moving. Always tense. Each painting becomes a record of those forces, channeled onto paper or canvas with the immediacy of rhythm and instinct.
Berlin gives him a backdrop rich with artistic dialogue, but his visual language is inward. He’s exhibited across Europe, in New York and Odessa, but location doesn’t define the work. The work speaks from somewhere else.
The Light Pours Out of Me (2023)
Acrylic on Artist Paper, 39 x 30 cm
This piece was made not in grief, but near it.
Richard Solstjärna created “The Light Pours Out of Me” after the death of a close friend. Not during the peak of mourning, but around it—while life was still adjusting to absence. He didn’t start with a tribute in mind. He didn’t sit down and think, I will paint this loss. The painting came into the world through process, through that regular surrender to color and shape. It wasn’t until it was finished that the title hit him. Like a lightning bolt, he says. That’s how many of his titles come: a strike, not a plan.
The work, like the moment that inspired it, moves in layers. Acrylic is the medium, but the energy is harder to pin down. The image doesn’t shout. It emits. There’s a quiet glow to it. Maybe sorrow. Maybe release. Maybe both. Solstjärna doesn’t try to steer the viewer toward a single meaning. Instead, he lets the painting do what it needs to do. It’s not about him. It’s about the thing that’s now on the paper—alive in its own way.
He writes: “Either with sickness or with age you’re going to feel or sense it. That the light pours out of you. It’s inevitable.”
There’s something brutally honest about that. The light doesn’t fade. It pours. And while that may sound gentle, it’s not passive. It’s active. It’s the soul leaving the body. It’s radiance in retreat. It’s the truth that no one escapes. But Solstjärna isn’t just observing this. He’s offering a directive: Transmit it to the world while you can. Use your light. While you have it. That message isn’t buried in symbolism—it’s spelled out.
Visually, the painting resists strict interpretation. It might resemble a body, or a flare, or a moment of collapse. The colors don’t clamor for attention. Instead, they bleed and pulse and crackle just beneath the surface. The texture suggests something raw. Stripped back. A quiet burst, mid-fall. This isn’t a painting designed to impress. It’s one that lingers. One that asks you to stop and feel what’s draining out of you, too.
The size is modest—39 by 30 cm. Not a canvas that demands wall space, but one that asks for closeness. You get the sense this was a private thing. An intimate conversation. Not meant for show, yet shared anyway.
This kind of honesty is part of Solstjärna’s larger body of work. He’s not interested in prettiness or polish. His paintings live in the place before meaning settles. They are imprints of feeling, energy made visible. “The Light Pours Out of Me” is just one of many, but it carries the weight of something final. Or perhaps something first.
When asked about the void that fuels his work, Solstjärna describes it as silent space. Origin. Not emptiness, but potential. A pulse waiting to emerge. That’s what this painting captures. A moment before the last flicker. Or maybe the very first.
In the end, what he offers is simple: life is brief. The light will leave you. So while it’s still in your hands, pass it on. Not in grand gestures, but in small, burning ones—on paper, in paint, in presence.
