The Expulsion from Paradise

Narrator
When the 20-year-old figurative painter William Heimdal discovered Hans Heyerdahl a couple of years ago, he got a bit of a shock. 

William Heimdal
I did not expect to see a painting that, in my opinion, can be compared to the best of Caravaggio and the best of the young Rembrandt. 

And since then, he has been a friend in the studio. He has been a guide when I am stuck with a painting… 

Narrator
William is often told that his artworks are reminiscent of Hans Heyerdahl's. And that this artwork in particular, which Heyerdahl painted when he was the same age as William is now, is confusingly similar to his own. 

William Heimdal
It’s very funny that Hans Heyerdahl has taken up residence in my paintings, in a way, and I in his. 

Narrator
But what is it about Heyerdahl's artworks that inspires William Heimdal almost 150 years later? 

William Heimdal
The most important thing I have learned from Hans Heyerdahl is the perception of form combined with focus. What is the focus of this artwork? What do I want the viewer to look at? What do I want to convey? 

Hans Heyerdahl masters it. He manages to decide where we should move our gaze. 

Another thing is that he has such a strong contrast between lightness and darkness. Something that helps determine where the focus is. When he made the figures glow like that, he has decided that our eyes naturally go there. But a risk associated with that, is that the figures can look like stickers pasted onto a landscape painting, but they don't in Hans Heyerdahl's artworks. And that is because he uses some of the same colours in the landscape, also on the skin. And some of the colours he has used in the skin he has also used in the landscape. And even though the form distinguishes Adam and Eve from the background, Adam and Eve are inseparable from it with their materiality.