What is your name and how would you briefly describe what you do?

My name is Johan Hesselstrand and I am living and working in Vadstena, an old small town beside the big lake Vättern. Before I lived in Stockholm, but I was born in the landscape Småland and the village Mariannelund, close to Vimmerby, the town of Astrid Lindgren.
Now I and my family are living in a former Fruit Musteri which we have renovated. Vadstena is a living town with a several interesting buildings. I like to do unusally pictures of the five most famouse houses here. The Abbey Church for example is a elephant in the theme of african animals, the Town Hall is a mallard in a serie of birds and the castle of Vadstena is a pike in the fishtheme. Otherwise I work as an Illustrator and doing pictures for textbooks, books and newspapers.

What part of your creative work do you like the most?

The first sketches in the beginning of a job feels as a challenge. A blank piece of paper filled with small, fast and sloppy sketches impossible to explain for others. When the idea is popping up, not always when I sketch, but often, then it is tingling in my whole body. The process from idea to the final picture is hard but often it is brigthening when I start to paint and make the final tunings.

Do you feel like you have developed in your work?

I think I am better at simplify my pictures nowadays. And I am not writing the messaget on the nose, as we say in Sweden, but give space for the viewers eyes to read something of their own in the picture. The illustration is not a repetion of the text but adds something new, and give strength to the message in the text.