I have sold my precious painting "The Invisible Tears of the Clown". I suppose I should be happy but I am not. Actually I am sad that I don't have it any more.
There is a golden night in Blueberry-Land. The Blueberryer is cycling on his golden bike. He is in a hurry; he is worried about his Blueberryess. She is hidden in a golden cage. She was hidden there by a vicious Spider-witch. The witch wants to suck the delicious blueberry sweet-scented juicy life from the Blueberryess. Can the Blueberry Biker arrive in time to rescue his lover? Can they live happily ever after together in Blueberry-Land?
Here is my new painting from the series “Return of Peter Pan”. Two good friends Mike and Kasia are thinking about their good friend Biggetje, who left them a few months ago. They are trying to console each other with a big hug. The two little puppets are their toys. They are in a red-orange-dark red-gold mood. What does that mean? I don’t have a clue. You will have to ask them. I hope you enjoy the painting. It will be available as a quality print as well as at Saatchi Online and at America Fine Art. I will post the links later on.
The title of the painting is “A kind of Red”. Feel free to make your own original interpretation-association between the title and the painting. It is an acrylics work on a deep canvas, 70 cm x 60 cm x 5 cm. Here are two images; the first shows the painting at an early stage, the second the final result.
Last year during the process of painting my Magnolia acrylics paintings I have been recorded myself. I made a short video document from the fragments I recorded. Every single artist has an own unique style of painting. Some love to paint when they are naked, some needs alcohol in their blood, while others prefer a good quality joint. I prefer listening to music and talking to myself. Dependent of the sort of art I create sometimes I sit, sometimes stay up, sometimes I run or walk around the work I create. Large abstract paintings or collages often lie on the floor or on the grass in the garden and I run as a crazy bull around them. From time to time I lie on the floor or kneel down.
On May, 11th 2011 I was invited by Tiverton Art Society to give a talk about art, video and the Boltzmann Paradox. The society has more than 200 members and is a very active one. Tiverton is an ancient borough and market town in the county of Devon, and the major town in the Mid Devon. It was a real pleasure to be there and to talk to the audience about quantum physics, my own art and art in general, and to present some of my videos. I even read one of my poems, the one about a physicist of course, the Nobel prize winner Niels Bohr.
I had some concerns before the talk, associated with my accent and random blockages of my memory; especially as I am tired (actually I am in a state of chronic fatigue related to my ME condition). I also wanted to talk about quantum physics, thermodynamics and the Boltzmann Paradox in a language in which I still struggle to express myself in the way I want to. When I talk in English I switch my brain into think-in-English mode, which is the way to master a foreign language. But still too often I am sucked in by antimatter, which tries to destroy my brain, confuse my memory and makes it impossible to have an intellectual, sophisticated chat. I find myself missing words, idioms, sayings, humorous expressions, knowledge of complicated grammatical structures. It is a matter of exercises, persistency and strong will, I know that. I am too old and I am lazy, I guess. J) However, I think everything came out successfully. The audience reaction was lively, and I thought they showed a real enthusiasm. I was talking about myself, my art, my videos, and physics and Boltzmann Creatures of course. I brought two big abstract paintings and a few new ones from the “Peter Pan” series. I was myself, spontaneous and a ‘little crazy’ as usual.
The Brits in general are very nice and polite people. Think about it for a moment; all the foreigners using and murdering their beautiful language and then the Brits listening and smiling and trying to understand the others. It is quite an achievement. They have my full admiration for their patience and calm. Definitely the majority of the audience preferred watching art videos and videos about my art than listening to my talk about quantum physics. (Maybe they were bored with my accent and my English!?) I wanted to talk more about thermodynamics and entropy but it was unanimously decided to watch all three videos about the Boltzmann Creatures, Betelgeuse and Mintaka instead of being educated about the laws of physics. Well, the perception of art proceeds in a completely different way than the understanding of the laws of physics. You have to force and to strain your grey cells to understand what quantum physics is all about. On the other hand it is surprising, to me at least, that we don’t try to understand the laws of physics more. As if the world we live in wasn’t extremely complicated. Just think about it for a second. Everything that surrounds us is related to one or another law of physics.
My talk was recorded. From the long video I chose the most interesting and amusing parts, from my point of view of course. Here is a short video part 1:
I created a video/slideshow to present my art from the last two years. Paintings, collages, installations, small sculptures all created in Devon, in Dunchideock. And of course lots of nature, black swans, trees, a cat and nice music.
The painting “She, the water and the night” is painted on a very special canvas, one with a past. This canvas used to belong to my uncle, who was an amateur painter, and as far as I can remember, it was kept in his bedroom. Barely visible lines and a few coloured spots. An unfinished image from an unknown past.
Do we really have to give up our dreams and allow society to rule our lives? It starts from the moment that we are born: “You have to do so, you have to behave in this way, you can’t say that, you can’t do that, don’t look like that, don’t move, don’t cry, don’t laugh, don’t think, don’t breath”.
Interview by TV-Lolland, Denmark – 29 October 2010
I am having at the moment a group exhibition in Rødby, Denmark at Gallery Sigvardson. Till November, 14th.
It is a slightly weird place to present my art, and I still don't really know what I am doing there…but nevertheless you can see some of my paintings on their web site. http://www.sigvardson.com/exh_current.php