Tinnitus

OoooooOOoo! AaaaaA-aaa! iiii & IIII endlessly over and over: This unassortment of noises is known as Tinnitus and it is not merely an audiological condition, it is our Curriculum Vitae, the noisy River Styx that our Life flows (and is drowning) in. Be it a rock concert or a traffic concert or any other disconcerting concert, the ears must sooner or later respond with their own from the depths of the cochleas. It would look something like this:

It must also be for sale on Saatchi Online, as I have to add to the visual noise of the world, where we walk with tinnitus ringing in our ears, bingbonging in our eyes and wailing in our souls. I don't do it in order to be seen. I am rather visible. The little problem is that everything is so delightfully visible, audible and so on, and to live and work in this chaos-beyond-chaos (disorder so great that one must take it for granted, even normal) is like selling paintings to the blinded and music for the deaf -- but most occupations seem to be this worthwile. I sometimes wonder if I'm to go on with my noise as counter-noise -- this is what draws me to Surrealism in the first place; it is just as illogical as the rest of the world, merely in a different way -- or if one should try to ignore it and serve visions of something different, something better, a world of greenery, laughter, dance and gentle sunshine and other sugary things. In both cases, it would add to the general noise. And noise causes tinnitus.

Last-of-Summer Painting, part II

While the real summer left, there are plenty of echoes every other day. So I finished this ambivalent thing (part naïvism, part total disregard for reality – as there’s carelessness in the other direction too) in ambivalent weather; borrowing a garden when weather was fine and burrowing inside my skull when it rained.  

I haven’t bothered with a straight horizon. The Earth is round, and I’m sure that various animals that live in trees -- and others that live less horizontal lives -- perceive this arbitrary boundary between Heaven and Sea very differently. The little castle is an idea that I’ve borrowed from Dutch master M. C. Escher. It’s the one thing in this little oval that I’ve planned with care, straight lines and all, proving that straight lines are no less misleading than curves. We’re merely brought up into thinking so. (It’s one out of many notions in our general miseducation, Presuppositions 101.)  

Then I went a little lazy and gave the apples some quite vague connection with the ground (they might ripen very slowly, and if they fall at all they need not necessarily fall earthwards). And so I signed. Voilà. Now I’ll go and see if I should make more matting and framing for my September exhibition. Might have enough works already.

End-of-Summer Painting

August. Still summer, but with a feeble, unstable feeling and occasional showers. Autumn is waiting around the corner, rather close during the evenings. A hot cup is good then...

...but 'round Noon it's still Summertime, with sunshine and butterflies. This one -- half a memory of half a moment -- was brown, spotted and incessantly fluttering, almost up in my face and then just gone. (It quickly realized that I wasn't a flower and this was a serious flaw in my character and probably not the only one.) So I settled for the Idea of a Brown Spotted Butterfly in General; decorative free miniature rather than impressionist strokes (lacking clear impressions).

I make a point of not planning too much. There's a new Vernissage on September 7:th, and I am really too busy framing and matting and cutting and measuring etc. so I'll paint as Time Almighty allows me to. I wonder what a cooler, rainier season shall do to this stream of details as I'm approaching the bottom of the little oval canvas. Summer fluttered by. Soon it might be gone.

 

Back to Nature

Clear, pristine waters, laced with an archipelago of singing forests... Let's go Back to Nature! -- but I wonder if we can, and soon I found biomechanical doubts with cogwheels and all leaking into my dream, as I painted it from my boat late in July.  

It's not very large; ink&aqua on A4 (roughly letter size) paper. This miniature is now competing on Saatchi Online (where one might also buy the original; far below sensible prize, if you pardon my itch to say so) in their Showdown.  

I'm happy that the swallows (resized, below) turned out so well -- summer is not Summer without these wonderful beings swooshing about.

It might also interest you that the tree is based on a Chestnut tree. (Another resized detail.)