This was originally intended as a political comment, but it turned into art instead, or something at least near it. The point was that the hands would draw blood from each other, and the blood would go somewhere else, for soon it is Taxation Day in Sweden, and as welfare has been lowered but taxes not quite so one might wonder where money goes.
But art shouldn't be simple like a political cartoon. It thrives on double, triple and multiple entendre, on uncertainty. Art is true democracy; it offers room for the individual and her interpretations in a way that no ideology can do. Instead, my hands turned into simply emptying each other of the vital fluid -- or if they vainly try to fill each other with blood, I don't know. A mysterious closed circuit, pointless in itself -- as many ideas are.
I wanted the blood to be a thicker fluid, but I already liked this slightly gaseous look and when an aquarelle is beginning to look well you must take your hands off. No brushes or syringes allowed.
"This is too bad to be true. Now Life is a bit too insulting, my misfortunes too improbable -- this just can't happen, the bad timing is too good..."
"This is too good to be true. This is not really happening, getting such an opportunity after such a long time; hope that I'm not being had, something's askew... do I hear angels singing? Come on."
After experiencing these new feelings of such profound unreality -- instances quite unrelated but within a fortnight -- well, then one had to paint again. Both times, everything went sort of sliding by, taking place on the fictional side of the lens. The world had lost its substance -- and I, obviously, vital parts of the screenplay -- might have to spend the rest of my only life improvising... Anyhow:
This vivid feeling of Not Really Happening and Silver Screen attracts, as we heard before, angels. And there's celluloid film, of course. (The ultimate symbol of Only Make Believe -- sadly but appropriately it is falling into disuse, thus out reality itself). Then what about the couple in the front...?
...They're made out of black and white, clean paper versus its opposite -- an unusual lot of ink with smudgy aquarelle. (It's the perfect way to ruin a painting if you're not careful. And your white shirt too.) Most likely they stand for for longings, perhaps for that magic moment when Impossible meets Possible Anyway... you decide. It takes an angel to sing praise to uncertainty. Let them sing. Let us embrace the feeling that life is greater than we know, more unreal for better and worse.
("Embrace": letter size miniature, the usual ink-and-aqua.)
This little piece is my dear friend Marie's fault. Or mine -- I happened to tell her about the curious and ancient eating habits that we had back when my family went to old little Dalsland during the summers, where time stood graciously still. And like the Mad Tea Party, the meals -- with quaint names that wouldn't translate even into modern Swedish -- tended to drag into each other. A sort of First breakfast crashed into Second breakfast. Seconds tended to saunter into some kind of pre-brunch, rolling on relentlessly into brunchlunch. This was all served in a lulling marinade of cheerful nonsense from my dear Granny, who was never able to stand a table conversation more radical than the weather yesterday, provided that it didn't rain too excitingly much. Attempts at resurrecting actual exchange of ideas were forcibly -- that is, cheerfully -- interrupted with some fine reminiscence of what my very same Grandmother did or heard once as a child, not very far from here, on that hill over there, or something in the same social but slightly anaemic vein. You had to run and hide early in the morning; I preferred to go out painting in this wonderful landscape (no breakfast but shake sugaree, provided that I got away...) this maze of small but very round hills clinging on the top of each other and covered all over with pines; interspersed with innumerable tarns and lakes, like deep and dark eyes, a realm of elks and yarns. It is quite dark and sad in this little piece; reflecting, like one of those murky creeks, my present mood. Not much one can do about it...
...to the best of my knowledge, they still have "dinner" at two p.m. And 'round something like three or four in the afternoon one might get invited to a large party, merry, hearty but nonetheless Ordeal that starts with coffee and sandwiches followed by coffee and cinnamon buns and then coffee and seven different kinds of cookies and you got to have one of each and when you're prepared to die -- dying 's bad table manners but there's not much one can do about it -- there comes the cream cake. And, nota bene, coffee. Then there's ordinary dinner (disguised as something else, for it is quite ruined now) and at last some kind of evening meal and... yes, now we were back at my Grandmother's place, not very far from where she was born and also near the place where she found a toad recently, id est, reheated Marinade d'Monologue.
So; Marie, who found this amusing, urged me to do some kind of rendering. Now let's see. There are fish swimming through the air -- one looked like this when I was working on it, the background came later...
...and elves dancing -- my friend's suggestion, as there are enough things dancing in the back of my mind already and they sort of had to be spirited away without digressing -- thus a little misty and fleeting -- and last but not least, coffee. Have some more coffee.
Time for dessert. This sketch I did on the spot, many years ago, escaping. You see the house up there, on the other side of a tarn.
I had to paint this. Say a little symbolic something, even if real life is much more cruel. I read in the Svenska Dagbladet (March 31, 2014) about a place named Tangshan in China, where the pear trees are dying from all the pollution spewed from the steel factories. And when the pear trees don't grow pears, the farmers have nothing to farm. They they have to find work at the steel factory.
Ink-and-aqua, letter size. Detail: Pears and farmers in tears. --- We live on the same planet, and the toxic clouds that are murdering fruit in China are also threatening you and me. We are all pears.
