”I ACHIEVE FREEDOM AS A SCULPTOR” Torbjörn once told me as we stood in the forest with an exceptionally handsome roebuck, which had just been shot, lying before us. Torbjörn made the dead animal into an experience of something beatiful. Something only an aesthete is able to do. There is something very special about a person who invites his guests to home cured elk meat from the kitchen table and then locks himself away for a while and returns with a lump of clay in the shape of a beautiful animal. This is Torbjörn exactly - he hunts and swears but he can also pause to say ”How lovely”! He has developed a rugged sensitivity both in his personality and in his scultures over the years. His career path as an artist lies close to his passion for hunting which has given him both inspiration and a feeling for nature. If in the sculpture you can see the closeness of the elk calf´s contact with its mother you know that the sculptor has experienced the feelings of the calf in the wild. If you can feel the tenseness in the muscles of a standing bird-dog in bronze then the sculptor has shared the dog´s excitement. This is no doubt where Torbjörn´s secret lies. The reason why Torbjörn collected wild game and fowl in Africa and Latin America is obviously due to his previous full time occupation as a taxidermist. He cannot completely hide this profession even though his bronze sculptures have now taken over. To put together animals in movement is to take a step further. A step towards freedom as he once put it in the studio at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. At that time Torbjörn was on his way into the world of Art. In his sculptures he has achieved complete freedom.
 

Tony Håkansson
Wildlife and artwriter