While he isn't the only mask-painter around, Gunnarsson has cornered the market of his niche business working from a studio in a barn kilometres southwest of Stockholm.
His talent, on display nightly at arenas around the NHL, is in creating something original for every customer. Gunnarsson started a small art business when he was just 16, dashing the hopes his grandfather had that he would some day take over the family farm. He spent his nights and weekends working on cartoons for local newspapers and magazines, or airbrushing custom designs for motorcycles and helmets.
Today, the year-old artist — who never actually played hockey himself — works with his clients in an effort to get inside the heads of NHL netminders such as Carey Price and Pekka Rinne, and bring their ideas to life. There are other talented mask-painters with NHL clients — many right here in North America — but it's tough to rival the number of NHL goalies Gunnarsson has as clients today. He bedazzles masks with their wildest imaginings — everything from superheroes to rock bands, hockey legends to cartoon characters, cherished family memories to city landmarks.
Since his work first appeared on NHL ice in , he's been a key trendsetter in this industry. I'm a big nerd when it comes to new paint techniques and effects. I always have new ideas ready to be unleashed in the new hockey season. Gunnarsson painted his first goalie mask in when local Swedish Hockey League team HV71 asked him to paint masks for its goalies.
The budding artist, who had grown up doodling cartoons and thinking about a career in animated movies, was brimming with ideas.
I was not the first here in Sweden to paint goalie masks in that way, but I tried to think outside the box and do unique things," Gunnarsson said. I had an explosion of orders after that. Gunnarsson went on to work for many Swedish hockey teams, several of them with promising young goaltenders who had yet to make inroads into the NHL, such as Lundqvist and Johan Hedberg.
Hedberg's big break turned into a major opportunity for Gunnarsson, too. His new black, white and gold Pens uniform didn't match with the bright blue mask he'd worn in Manitoba — one Gunnarsson had fashioned with a big cartoon moose.
Hedberg captivated Penguins fans quickly as he helped backstop the team to the Eastern Conference final; they'd bellow "Mooooooose! Hedberg had the option to order a new mask from Gunnarsson during that playoff run, but opted to keep wearing his lucky, well-loved Moose bucket. Enter Search Term.
Use arrows to navigate between autocomplete results. If no results appear, use Enter to do a full site search. Fan Zone. Club Red Much simpler than what we see from him today, and much more green. I bought it at age 15, so It has had different looks.
At first it was all black. Then there was a white spider net which I taped myself. After that I painted a green spider net on a red base. After it got all destroyed when I took a shot to the head playing in a game against Russia in an under 17 tournament I repainted it again, now with red, white and green stripes.
Finally, after using the mask for about 2 years I put this one on the shelf, but before retirement it was painted one more time and this is what it looked like Growing up I made my own pads, painted my helmets, built my own nets.
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