The Transience of Memory

As I was working on my portfolio (Coming Soon, I hope?) I needed a picture of an important painting that slumbered safely in digital peace on a DVD -- or so I thought. It didn't. The disk that was worth is weight in gold refused to work. It was now worth its weight in dust. So my thoughts went to Dalí's famous Persistence of Memory. 

The present problem is that memory won't persist or insist at all. Pull the plug, burn the fuse and all that we know and love is gone -- and with poor backups, digital amnesia or total oblivion is a fact. So it is very fitting that I took my electric pen for a nightly stroll to make The Transience of Memory. 

(Click on the image to see it better. And in order to see it even better, one might Order a Fine Print...)

Poor girl. You see hints of electronics in her skin, you see more than a hint of circuits in the waves. There's information on the melt all over the beach, and the once-functional computer has become a different kind of fruit...

 
 --- I found a better copy, eventually. And sooner or later I may show it to you, in a picky selection of my very best works -- don't know precisely when. Farther along, I see other digital obstacles towering in the mists. I make myself ready to climb.   
 

Mermaids etc.

So! At last the boat is in the Sea, and I get to come out and do a little marine painting.

Right now we'll have to make do with this sketch of mermaids and other creatures of fair Lake Mälaren and all the fiards therein. Some of them don't sing too well. The sirens of business (as seen in the foreground) should be avoided entirely. They try to lure you aground.
 

 But I got to meet with a nice one while practising quick swirls with the pen,

and long winters when I paint indoors, fighting with nuances in the light that is not, I miss  this simplicity of life and art.

And now I'll go insane. If you promise that you'll be nice to this simple little work and let it be like it is, I can't see why you shouldn't have your very Own Copy. There you go; click on the link, download. (It should open in a new window. Wait for a little while, this is Utterly High Quality.) Then you're very welcome to print it out. It's Summertime, and the living 's easy...

-- Ps. If this just wont work, despite consulting all your local computer geeks, try tapping on the picture below. It's in somewhat lower quality but perhaps more accessible. So it goes.

 

Networking / Enchufes / Kontakter

Close friend, distant cousin? Old classmate or new bedmate? -- I should spend less time wondering what strings Ms. Xx and Mr. Xy pulled in order to get this and that assignment beyond my dreams, those who suddenly Appear instead of, for instance, me. The world of Arts and Graphics is run By Invitation Only, and I can still only guess how the wiring goes behind the Potemkin market where lottery tickets with good numbers are bought and sold. Needing some kind of de-acidification, I drew this little praise in 2½ languages (mi Español es muy limitado) of this subtle and gentle system in my usual ink-and-aqua on A4 paper (≈letter size).

Swedish Kontakter means Contacts, of course, and Enchufes is the Spanish term for the same electrifying kind of human connections. The word and idea of Networking has seeped deeply into Swedish and Sweden. (Another local word for clandestinely climbing upwards and sending others downwards through intrapersonal entanglements, Nätverka, is virtually the same).

Let us be fair and say that Prince Potemkin didn't invent this game. I'd blame Plato;

In his Republic, he advocates a kind of genetic engineering, or ethnic breeding. The best sociodarwinistic result is attained when strong men are mated with fair healthy women, and in order to have these arranged marriages arranged without too many protests, the philosopher suggested a Marriage Lottery. This lottery, as you already understand, would be heavily arranged itself, fair as a quackdoctored election. But now the losers would only blame their poor luck, or so Plato thought. It never occurred to him that that most people smell something fishy when they draw no. 666 thirteen times in a row.

Or have we lost our sense of smell? We might renounce monarchy and the influence of a few wealthy families -- but at least we honestly know how those therein got their job; by being born. Their lottery ends there. Here I have no space nor will or strength for further speculations concerning the other and sadly voluntary kind of lottery; whether many generations of clinging, climbing and personal electricity have befouled the air so much that we think there's fair trade going on behind the curtain when we, by this time true connoisseurs of kameraderei, ought to recognize the distinct smell of exquisitely pungent Baltic herring. (Hmm, sniff sniff, prima sekunda fisk! five months on the rot, I'd say, or is it seven?) Anyhow --
 

I aimed to draw this little exposé with some kind of vitriolic humour. Networking and using each other is what people amuse themselves with while our Earth is dying, and creativity and painting is my little amusement -- my only one and the only thing I can still believe in -- while they network.



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On the Effect of Laqueroholism in Small Boats, et al

Poor Little Myy. My sailing oak (small, Finnish and stubborn, hence the Moomin name) is deeply into varnish. She can't get enough. 
"C'mon, gimme more varnish! *hic!*"
"Now look, you've had no end of bottom paint, then you had shot after shot of strong linseed oil, as if they were water, you've had one entire jar of my finest Schooner Tung Oil and now you want more... Well, Miss; --"
"Aw, don' be so square, Sir! 'M still thirsty! 'M cracking up! *hic!* More varnish!"

 While waiting to serve the next round of Schooner Tung, I made this little sketch, an ecological elegy. Resized details:

We'll see what else I can do as an artist while this is going on. As for City Lights, it has been interesting to see the expression of the accordionist change as pencil and ink give way to oil. Part of the surreal method, I think, is to let your brush wander a bit on its own accord;

-- she's a bit more serious now, I think, and perhaps a bit more serene? As usual, it is you who have to tell me the meaning of this. I can not, must not know.


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I will understand later. I'll understand what the ringing tones meant, what she was trying to say; perhaps years later, by which time it is far too late to do anything about whatever it was. 

Gotta go. There's Myy again.
"Pleeaze... Just one last jar before I go to sea, I promise..."