he draws like i dream

i first saw the work of anders nilsen on the covers and dust jackets of the hans christian andersen's fairy tales book pictured below and became mildly infatuated. even though i was not in need of a new copy of andersen's tales, i had to have this book. for the cover. he draws like i dream. his images tell of a place in that shady border between conscious living and the unconscious mind. it is moody and dark and deep and frightening and innocent and beautiful all at the same time. his images bear a cute familiarity...yet they manage to be cute without ever seeming trite, and then twist at once into something terrifyingly absurd. i can only describe his images as dreamlike---a tangle of the ordinary and the symbolic, both meaningful and meaningless, abundantly simplistic and haunting in their beauty.