A leather mask, covering half the face, as a thought for 2018…
A possible explanation (insert yours here) is that I’ve been constantly annoyed by people who clandestinely tries to change one into something beautiful that one isn’t. To the best of my knowledge, unicorns don’t have foul manners, never swear and only drink water. But I’m not a unicorn… One also happens to be an artist, and as such we work with All emotions, All aspects of being a human being, even the less appetizing ones. I know an excellent actor, a good soul but an annoying fussbudget too – she’s utterly perfect for characters that demand a certain hypocrisy, shallowness and so forth. Because she is the one that she is. Light can’t exist without darkness.
When you truly Accept a person, you accept the whole works, the entire Gonzo – thinking of Hunter S. Thompson now, who was a truly difficult person, with endless faults, and thus the only one who could’ve written the works of Hunter S. Thompson. There’s a notion that I’ve often heard:
“I like X’s plays/movies/books/etc. but not this or that part of X.”
It is a notion for cowards, who refuse to see the complex thing that a human is; to be a Self is to be a self-contradiction.
“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
There are of course limits. You might not have to be a murderer in order to write Crime Fiction (even if some poor works in that genre – there are so many – would’ve been improved by it) but perhaps you, at least for a moment, have to Want to kill?
So, now when you sit wondering what lofty promises that you’re to make for this year, be careful of what you wish. Above all, don’t wish to become a Better person. Lord knows what’ll happen on the dark, masked side of your soul then. You should rather wish to know thyself. Have a whole face.
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A glimpse behind the curtain: this is the tinting before I added the details on top…
…and this is the original pencil drawing.
Happy New Year 2018, Happy Same Old You!
Merry Xmas unto all that are Xmasing -- and I wish you a fine day to you who aren't too -- this is what Yours Sincerely has been doing on the side of complaining and whining in general. It might not look too well in our prolonged November gloom. The grain of canvases have always deterred... and so on. To stop whining, here it is: Åsa-lo (good friend!) calls this a Trontelont -- what would you say that it is? Mini-Mimi-Mastodon?
Pictures in magazines have never been so pro, so snazzy, so irrelevant. With a few golden exceptions (National Geographic etc.) they are all brought from Shutterstock and their ilk. They fit, but just barely, whatever the column, editorial or whatever was ever about.
How do you explain this 'for whom it might concern'?
That instead of something embarrassingly generic (it grows all the worse when the reader soon sees this photobait in some entirely different context somewhere else) ...they may get something on-the-spot, crafted by hand, -- yes, something locally produced instead of this McEyecandy they've been addicted to?
Now, does this matter? Our little worries, with this world being as it is?
Partly, it does. This Unnecessary Comfort.
"Iceberg ahead!"
Ah, nah, this is a modern ship, just go ahead.
"This beef is produced ecologically, and --"
Pollution schmollution, let's do McDonalds.
And so on.
I could mention various Titanics of the modern mind, but by now I think that you got the point.
Even if you're a lazy Art Director, and an addicted one too.
This is another one for the book that I might finish before being caught up by Death or Flies: In my surreal little tale, the Flies are pestersome creatures that try to see and control everything, have opinions about everything in general and especially how you and me live. Sounds familiar? (I just hate flies, so the choice was obvious.)
The compound eyes was made possible thanks to my dear model, who patiently let me take pictures from a dozen different angles. Using one eye (or worse, stealing imagery) just wouldn't yield the same result.
Some kind of fungi (that I can't place) made the basis for some of the yuckier textures. The wings are warped from weeds (inverted).
The older I get, the less patience I have for people that buzz about and can't live and let live. I want a swatter!
Dear readers -- here's an elephant.
Now, elephants are generally not perceived as very sexy. So their chances of getting into the art market via bed are rather slim.
Here I wanted to add a few notes about #metoo and how this debate has spread to the cultural world -- with a notable exception, the spheres of Fine Art, where everything immoral and possibly illegal is part of how this dimly lit world works. But I can't. Merely thinking about it is draining my soul. The best that I can do is to go on writing my little book of mine: I've done that for seven years, so don't expect any release soon. But it will contain artistic elephants...
...Despair not, little elephant! You might not have a chance to enter the World of Art, um, bedwise. But if you have but mediocre talent in your snout there's still a good chance. You might know the good Art Writer, who writes in the fancy Art Columns. Hmmm, very expressive! Wide strokes. An emotional talent... -- The Writer knows the Gallerist who knows the Collector, and together they'll make your art very wanted and praised and costy all of sudden. Tooot! I know -- this is Insider Business and that normally lands you in jail. But art business is a strange thing, with plenty of space for the elephant in the room. Or an entire herd, give or take the recent one.
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Technical notes for the easily entertained: The elephant texture is a leather pattern (it was brown before and part of a handbag) while the canvas, apron and cap was made out of the same image (but very different resolutions): It was part of my sweater. The floor is made out of ... a floor. So enfin a little electric hokus-pokus, and there you are.
Yours sincerely has, as the observant reader has already noticed, been going downhill as of late. Last Saturday-soon-to-be-Sunday was spent in Total Exhaustment lying down staring at the roof, for reasons mentioned earlier, and Paintstakingly skipped a heartbeat. Yours sinc. renders status quo with this sketch:
I feel like a pianola: Yes, the old self-playing piano with stripes cut in the paper that makes the song, in my case a very pointless one, paint, try to sell, repeat. This basso continuo is affecting my art more than I want to and is something that I also hear echoing throughout the rest of society. Produce so that you may consume, lose the hours of life so that you stay alive. Live long and... despair.
Let us see:
Chandelier, check.
Piano playing The Merry Anthem of Productivity |:repeat ad infinitum:|
The Woodenheads marching. They uphold Our Values and Standards. Unlike me, they never miss a beat as aforesaid Anthem is echoing xylophonically through their heads. Check.
Below, the used and discarded biomass of humanity. Check.
Or whatever interpretation that you want.
November! -- If my dismay for summers that are too hot and hay-feverish wins my bottom ten, Novembers are a good second. Dark, rainy, soggy, disheartening -- did I say dark? -- and dismal on the whole. Even your soul goes damp. So I had no idea for this week until my friendly Muse suggested a candle in the darkness. So here goes.
You see that the light is sort of cogwheeling, and has company -- I'm sort of not done with my thoughts of the previous week yet (if I'll ever be) so a bit of the symbolism there spilled over to this week.
Pins and needles rust and bend, rust and bend... unless they are nice titanium screws, guaranteed to last for a lifetime. The angel in the background (or if it's merely a small one that can dance on the head of a pin, rusty or not -- your choice) bears resemblance to the great Frida Kahlo -- I've had considerably less surgery than her after all (although I believe that Life spared her face, if not the rest -- here, it's the other way around) -- and The Broken Column particularly. It has made a profound impression.
As for the now flightless messenger pigeon (poor dove) yours sinc. suffers from some kind of Sales Fatigue now again (a lot of e-mailing in vain) the main symptoms being Decreased Will to Live as expressed by the body in general (you'll be spared the details). And I try to pull myself together, but mental pins and needles rust and bend.
I do appreciate 30'sh cartoons for their certain sogginess, being contemporary with the Dalí watches and all. Less talk and more imagery!
The fenders just had to be 30's green for all that. So why did I create an ambulance? the reason is of no importance now, I could not use it there. I had better give it to you, dearies.
There's a bitter afterthought. (You don't have to read on.) There are countries where one mustn't get ill at all. And this is Sweden, where some people think that all people may get ill, recuperate and then whee hey we're on the track again.
This is not so.
If you're rich you may. And if you're a member of the Union, this diminishing Other Upper Ten, you might too.
And the Other Upper Ten long ago said -- shove the rest! -- but on this day of solidarity, May 1:st.
And that's why May 1:st is but one day out of 365.
...a bit of tick and tock for a little book that I'm working on. (I'm down with a cold yet again and we run a bizzle late.) It's my own project that has been going on forever, the advantage being that I might show you a little now and then.
The clockwork (or -works?) suffer from heavy Dalírium. Perhaps not melting, but everything close to it.
Oh, before I go -- I thought that you might fancy seeing the little clockwork guardian up close:
An improvised thing. Looks rather stern. But well, I suppose that guarding melting watches is important work.
I like fish. I actually like them too much, and don't like eating them really -- if they're not Sushi, which I might simply gobble until my gills are full. I suppose that it has something to do with the tiny pieces? Whole fish look rather reproachful, lying on their iced beds:
"Now Look what they've done to me?!"
The physical original was ink on green paper -- you may still see that hue on the body of the creature. It was changed into blue and pink on other parts, keeping the original texture. Details are digital.
I've had some fun with the patterns on the wings. They remind me of a microchip circuit gone wild and natural; like a light bulb with moss on it (would be fun to draw someday).
...a Certain Someone said. And I did! Well, one has to be careful asking a surrealist for anything at all. I've done my Very Best to make a realistic airplane, down to the last feather and slimy scale. And I haven't forgot that airplanes, although majestic in the sky, smoke too goddamn much -- not good for Mother Earth, nohow.
And being down with good company and a nasty cold, this is about what I can do this Inktober weekend.
...if this book is to be printed, I sadly won't use Georgia. Now I am not thinking of Georgia, the wonderful Jazz standard, but Georgia, the Typeface which you might see now (or not, Internet being what it is.) (And in the manner of dear Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész -- do look up his magnificenct A kudar in a language near you, the "foreword" or, story before the story is worth more than most books. (And Imre, this one I understand, loved to add a second in parenthesis after the first one or thirty-eleventh, so here goes.) It looks well on screens, but not necessarily on paper.
- It is very, just very Uncomfy. Our protagonist was Young and Green and actually Tried to Sell a Real Painting to a Real Gallerist. Oh Boohey. Imre knew this feeling, and he described this totally power-unbalanced kind of meetings better than I can ever do.
I started on an oil a few days ago, painting these sparkling things. Apart from maple leaves, the work might contain just anything that comes to my mind. The weather has been quite moist and grey. It doesn't encourage painting outdoors, so I think that I'll keep bringing small sparkling pieces of Autumn in as long as they're out there, one leaf at a time. And see what happens.
One might not believe that the same person made this too:
It belongs to the same project as last week, the Restless Eggs (q.v.). I've done a lot of other things too but those were for money and can't be shown to you, at least not yet (sadly, some of it was good).
What do you think it is? I rest my case.
For a work that I just Might finish, if I feel like it, drawing on free associations, old and new.
We're going to have an entire omelet of these. (This time, as you see (far right) I do some rough outlines which I then smear with electric paint. We're cloning the eggs.)
Hens that may roam outdoors lay brown eggs, or so I am told, so I suppose they're happy.
I admit, I confess -- this might remind one very much of certain work by Dalí, Ma femme, nue... (link) etc. etc, a very long title. My take, however, is also inspired by the Castle Ruins of Borgholm, Öland, Sweden -- where the nature is rather wild and harsh, yet mild and green... some of which you may hint here. At least I've made some Blue Chicory, which this narrow island has quite a lot of.
Sadly. Dalí never got around to try drawing with a digital pen, especially not in combination with colouring with some collage made up of (heavily distorted) footage from the spot. I wonder what Maestro had done with it. Or perhaps he would've gone into developing surreal games too? One never knows. I'd love one with melting watches.
I'll go on with the thingy of previous week some other day. My back still hurts from carrying a piano yesterday, portal but barely so.
And here's the sweet songbird. Being a dino is risky, one might go extinct at any time and then it's good to carry a trusty songbird.
I've got as far as adding some watercolour to the ink. Might be cherry tomatoes. Another colour would yield another taste. Sadly, we only see in a small spectrum of light; ah for the sweet taste of ultraviolet, mellow gamma or peppery infrared! -- but this is what I use...
Carefully labelled and sorted, as you see. Still much to do. The original Ink:
Some greenery. The plant simply happened to be in the garden where I happened to be. And as for the meaning of it all...
...I won't refuse to tell you this week. I might refuse to tell you next week, when I hope to be finished. See you!
One should always evolve, or at least try out new things now and then. So this little thing is more naïvistic than some of my other output -- the thoughts behind it less so...
The ant happened to get dressed a little queer. Perhaps a progressive society of ants told it that one may become what one wants. But it is still an ant, and all the day long it does whatever ants are supposed to do.
Way down through both antennae there may be some queasy feeling that something is Dead Wrong, just wonder what it is. But ants don't get to think that much and are sadly inefficient whenever such questions arise, tired as one might be after yet another nine-to-five. And the rest of its society sees little need to evolve artistically or in any way, they're already ants and that's the finest thing there is:
"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise".
The details are better in the final rendering than in the first -- made on an iPhone (with glass beginning to crack very much too!). But it wasn't possible to keep its freshness, its immediacy (it never is) in the last version. So it goes. And now my antennae are twitching.
This is yet another Do-It-Yourself. The Meaning of this is no more settled than freshly delivered Ikea furniture, all odd bits and ends are probably included but it's anybody's guess What goes Where and Why. So, what do you think it is? I see...
...a bottle with angels swarming around it...
...turning into a dilapidated Swedish cottage, which turns into...
...a temple of sorts.
That is, if you read from left to right, which one doesn't do in all cultures or languages. In the other direction we have a temple turning into a cottage that longs to get bottled. During a sleepless night in the company of Wikipaedia, the source of all mostly-somewhat-right knowledge, I read a bit about Korean, which orders its clusters of letters both horizontally and vertically according to precise but intricate rules... Do read this sketch in just any direction that you fancy.
There's a curious little parade of the Woodheads marching from the buildingamajig too. The Woodheads have been in my paintings since 2010 or so. They seem to enjoy doing something that their woody minds find very important. I suppose that they always do.
Very much what the title above says; a tired little sketch made between "drawing for the pot" i.e. artistic chores made for a living. Here goes:
There's a Someone happy flying/riding a Something too...
Last but not least, as for the "Hut Pyramide"... it's from a very old daydream of mine; small houses, or even huts, piled on each other to make something great and pyramidal. It probably means something. Some day I might get to know what ...Never disrupt a daydreamer.
Yours sinc. hasn't had much time for his own art this week. I've been busy making some art on demand that I, sadly, can't show to you, at least not yet. But another assignment happens to be helping out with an academical composition, checking grammar and improving its flow on the whole. And I remember how entangled one could get back in one's own student days, being hopelessly ensnared in words and phrasing, editing and changing until everything was a perfect muddle. And, well, then you feel like this... How the mind could drift away 'til nothing remained of the Academical Mummy... Voilà. Those were the days. I had excellent help then, though, and I hope to be the same.
Well, I've finished this rather vertical oil on a natural canvas (gesso'ed but not whitewashed) and might do better by letting it speak for itself. It is a jumble. Isn't life also?
The last details: Some kind of village, Spanish colonial style? -- made its way on the flowerpot. Why not. Why not Anything, Dearies. I remember it from Southern California (Santa Barbara, actually). I remember those houses had "bird stoppers". And hummingbirds fluttering outside. Perhaps I simply long to go Somewhere Radically Else.
