October 27, 2013

Framing Insanity

As my Dance-and-Poetry-Vernissage is drawing nearer, I am practising unusually hard on the piano, wild reveries that are interspersed with frantic framing and cutting and matting, see image below...
 



Anyway, this is how it feels. Electric pen on electric paper. And, happily, no need for either framing nor matting. 



October 21, 2013

Autumnal Pencil

Autumn is falling down and away, becoming and going in the same time; everything is gently but completely broken and fragmented as those beautiful transient forms known as maple leaves, leaving an increasingly melancholic bittersweetness behind as colours and light fade.
(Continued below)


(Pencil drawing, with discrete Photoshop tinting.)

In this vein I wrote a little paraphrasis on a Poem attributed to Emperor Hadrian:

And now ye sail away
the breeze is good and raw,
the river running one way down
and no change of course is needed.
Is there another shore out there?
Or is it sweet just to go?
Soon we have lost you in the fog
and for you
we're but mist
and dampness.


The best translation of Hadrian's original is, in my opinion, this one by Reverend James Ford (early 19th c.)

Say, fleeting Spirit, gentle, dear,
The body’s guest and comrade here,
Whither, Oh whither, now away?
Into what regions wilt thou stray?
Pale, numb, and desolate; no more
To jest and trifle, as before.


It is flowing, yet as I understand true to the original. Nothing can match, though, its melody and rhythm; falling gently as maple leaves:

Animula vagula blandula
hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis in loca
pallidula, rigida, nudula?
Nec ut soles dabos iocos.

-- Now, are we sad enough to enjoy Autumn properly? Cheers.

October 14, 2013

Geese and Gouache

Fall time. Painting outdoors, your fingers go numb and soon the rest of the body too, but it's worth it -- the colours, the colours! It was a grey and bitter day, so I brought a piece of grey cardboard, some ink and white gouache. Next, I let a little autumnal watercolour seep into the thick paper mass.   



Voilà. By the way; the birds, my cackling company while freezing and painting, were Barnacle Geese. We have plenty.



October 07, 2013

Poster for My Next Show...

Again, we celebrate the Simultaneous Week; a week so stuffed with Everything in the Same Time that it is strictly impossible to blog about. I am planning for my November exhibition (Larry's corner, Grindsgatan 35, Stockholm, Sweden, November 9:th!) -- Vernissage at 1'o Clock, while the poetry-music-and-dance-mischmasch with Poet P. Palm and Prima Ballerina A. Emthén begins at two. (Piano: Myself.) The latter spectacle will be played and danced quite ad hoc around the stanzas, all improvised, and might end in just any fashion. Exciting! -- The poster will look something like this:


I am also trying to paint a few new things to replace all the goodies sold in September. There's beautiful fall colours out there, right now.