I feel the sadness of the city, a sadness all the more powerful because everything around suggests that there is nothing to be sad about. «BLACK PAPER – Writing in a Dark Time» by TEJU COLE A new, beautifully disturbing essay collection by Teju Cole. If I am to highlight some of them … 1)…
Category: art writing
Failed attempt
A few weeks ago I tried out a new palette; payne’s grey, raw umber, raw sienna, white & sanguine. It was all very well matched and elegant, almost sophisticated. But it wasn’t me. If “Art (as according to Jerry Saltz) is a way of showing the outside world what your inside world is like.” This…
From what I’ve read
(i) “To be in favor of solitude is not to be against community or friendship or love. It’s not that being alone is better, just that without the experience of it we block ourselves from discovering something enormously beneficial, perhaps even vital, to selfhood. Who are you when you are not a friend, a partner,…
Still life paintings in 2021?!?
So why would one, or more precisely I, want to make still life paintings in 2021? I have asked myself this question quite often lately but have yet to find a good answer. Not only do still life painting seem a bit … old fashioned?! The still life has in fact always been regarded as…
A degree of darkness
I spent my weekend in a graphic workshop learning the art of cyanotype. Or, to be more precise, studying the method of cyanotype – the art will hopefully enter into my work as I go along. Cyanotype is a nineteenth century photographic process using chemicals that produce beautiful blue prints when exposed to sunlight. The…
Art and Fear
Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be. I guess I mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards)…
Back to work –
Back in Norway & back to work. The coming week I will be traveling to see & write about a new installation by the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, at KODE in Bergen. Chiharu Shiota gained wide international recognition after having represented Japan at the 56th Venice Biennial in 2015, with an installation called “The key in…
Notes on Melancholy, part 2
from A Field Guide to Melancholy … melancholy & genius: Aristotle: ‘Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholics, and some of them to the extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile?’ Moyra Davey
Notes on Melancholy, part 1
A depressive illness or a passing feeling? Mental detachment or a precursor to genius? Melancholy is a critical part of what it is to be human, yet we all seems intent on removing all signs of sadness, depression, or, quite simply, low moods from our own lives. In A Field Guide to Melancholy Jacky Bowring studies melancholy…
Ars Poetica XIII
The space between two languages is a space like no other. — Anne Carson . Writing anything at all is a work of translation exactly comparable to that of transmuting a text from one language into another. — Paul Valéry .
sub rosa 