July 28, 2022

A Busy July; Cloves, Apples and Monsters, Oh My!


As Larry of Larry’s Corner has been so kind to extend my exhibition, this being low season and all, I’ve had much to do as a guide among my own creations, telling tales and (hopefully) creating interest. The personal eye-to-eye contact is dead important in all relationships --- including the one between Artist and Collector --- and it is an outright shame that our digital times now kills so much of this. It kills business too. One of my favourite poets wrote:

“Now it’s not far from house to house / But far from heart to heart”

Nils Ferlin was referring to the fast but heartless highways that they were beginning to build in his days, but it goes perfectly well for information highways too. We connect so easily, but it is futile as we do not quite reach each other this way, and in business context this means No Show. As this globe gets overheated, we’ll just sit there with our excellent contacts:

“It’s burning here!”
“Really? Here too!”
“And here!”

And nobody will have the heart put the fire out. Consuming sensibly, staying on the ground and all necessary last-minute implementations become Somebody Else's Problem. How much for communication when caring is gone.

Trying to see beauty in the middle of impending doom, I painted “Cloves” --- digital, saving a failed painting on cardboard.

I also invented The Abdominable Galtan, a parody monster, on the “political maps” that you may see here and there. (Sometimes referred to as “GAL-TAN”.) Galtan, this daft beast, can only think in terms of left vs. right, mild vs. brutal force. But I couldn’t care less if we’re ruled by an elite of idiots or an equally idiosyncratic herd. I am also oblivious to whether this rule is to manipulate you or whip you into submission.

What a cutie. On the lighter side, here’s “Cherries and Windfall”. It’s made in ink and many, many layers of watercolours on a thirsty piece of cardboard.

The odd little WW-beetle is something that I’ve seen two times in my life. The first time when having a dangerously high fever in my teens. The other after staying awake for three days and night, finishing my Bachelors’ thesis. Creepy-crawley. But the other time I was but in my twenties, and we were immortal back then.