Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund is a third-generation Sámi artist. He comes from the southern reaches of Sápmi, where his people have always lived, in the north of Sweden, where the light in summer never quite leaves and in winter is gone before you've finished your coffee.He went to Florence when he was young and stayed there for a decade. He studied drawing, painting, and sculpture and taught at the Florence Academy of Art. A man learns things in ten years in Florence. You walk the same streets Michelangelo walked, and you start to understand that a mark made honestly does not disappear.Per Elof returned to Sweden and continued painting and exhibiting his work at museums. He and his wife spent their time between Sweden and California. They now live in southern Monterey County.He paints people. He has always painted people. He mixes his colors from earth pigments,, and he knows what each one does in oil and how it interacts with light. A painting can take four years. In the north, you learn to wait and to look. The light changes, then changes again, and if you were not there, you did not see it.The paintings are built in layers. Each layer dries before the next one comes. So does a man. Symbols move through his work the way wind moves snow. They do not stay still, and they do not mean only one thing. His project Mov Gïele, which means My Voice, is a suite of large-scale figurative paintings, fifteen years in the making. It is about the Sámi people and the history they carry. The work was most recently shown in Chicago.A full exhibition history can be found at www.penricklund.com