As I was reading Carl Larsson´s books (well, more looking at the pictures than reading) I came across this interior with Dala paintings, the kind called kurbits. Dalarna is a Swedish region known for its particular kind of peasantry decoration style, or allmoge, of which kurbits painting is a part. It is used for furniture, wooden boxes, tapestries, grandfather clocks, and so on. It has its roots in the baroque styles of decoration and the word originally means cucumber or pumpkin plant.
I lived for most of my childhood in Dalarna and my mother-in-law lived there for almost twenty years (raising her first batch of children). Some traces of this has survived in our home. We have a kitchen cupboard inherited from the mum-in-law, originally painted in a colour called dalablå. It more like verdigris now, and when I decided to vamp up the dining table by painting it the same colour, the one most like it that I could buy was called Mint Green.
When I was a child, there was a printed hanging in the hallway leading into the kitchen with a kurbits painting of The Queen of Sheba. Or, as it was called, "The Queen of Rich Arabia visits King Solomon with gifts". These biblical motifs were very popular, and the bible story characters were depicted as if they were inhabitants of 18th or 19th century Dalarna. Very charming. I now have that hanging in my kitchen, one of a few reminders of childhood that I cherish.
This is just too cool! I thought it was someone painting on a photo at first, but it´s not, it´s real life paintings made to look, well, I don´t know what to say! Can´t find much more about the artists than this. Amazing.
I wouldn´t see as much great art as I do if I didn´t subscribe to Faith is Torment.
This got my attention this morning. Robert C Jackson´s still lifes are, well, just wonderful to explore. They make me think that there must be a hidden beauty in all the seemingly mundane stuff that surrounds me that I am oblivious to. What does one need to see that? Rose-tinted glasses? In that case I must get me some.
I so love these paintings by artist Jared Small! I particularly appreciate how he lets the paint loose to turn the painting into something magical. There is something about them that fires the imagination.
I am very fortunate, by the way, to have found Faith is Torment, which brings a couple of artists I never heard of to my attention every day. If you are into art, I recommend you to subscribe.
Adam Lister does pixelized versions of famous art and famous people. The first one I saw was van Gogh´s bedroom in Arles, and I recognized it immediately, which made me realize just how little of a likeness one needs to still get the kind of shorthand he has developed, inspired by old Nintendo games. I find this so charming and pretty, but it has depth to it as well.
I found this picture in my files from this spring - adorable polar bears in porcelain by artist Anna-Sofia Mååg, who exhibited at the Art Gallery at the Culture House in Luleå in January. I was very, very tempted to get one!
She also had some horses on exhibition, some pots and paintings. Everything had a very dreamy character, I thought, everything seemed as if surrounded by mist. Almost transparent, in a way. The polar bears may, of course, not have much time left, likely as they are to drown when the ice melts from the global warming. I don´t know if this was on Mååg´s mind, but it is what she makes me think about.
There was one exhibition at the Art Gallery last month that I did not care much about. It was Dan Perrin´s drawings and paintings. The programme states that "Dan Perrin´s art has a peacefully threatening doomsday mood, spun with a good dose of humour" (my quick and dirty translation). He has a website, where you can see more of his art.
I´m not sure why I don´t warm up to this and why I can´t get to the content of the images. Perhaps it´s the bad finish that intercepts my view - being a bit of a craftsperson myself, I like finished edges and things made to last; even when I´m sloppy there are limits to how sloppy I can bear to be, and I would certainly choose another place to be sloppy in than the Art Gallery. But then I think, perhaps the sloppyness is part of the artistical statement? That´s certainly a possibility, that he is consciously provoking me, particularly since he was sharing the Art Gallery last month with near-perfectionists like Gudrun Söderholm and Roland Borén. I don´t know. I do know I have been thinking quite a bit about art and presentation lately, and how it might be a good thing to be a bit more "quick and dirty" some of the time. What do you think?
Every year, Luleå municipality buys art for 200.000 SEK and places it in different public places and offices. Every year, the art is hung in the Art Gallery for a month, and everyone is invited to look and vote on where each piece of art goes. It used to be that only employees of the municipality could vote, but some of my friends and I (and, no doubt, several others) protested and left our votes anyway, seeing as it is our tax money after all, and we spend a lot of time in some of those public places. It´s nice to see that it´s possible to change things, even if this was a minor one.
One painting that made an impression on me this year was this: "Motherhood" by Eva Zettervall. It immediately made me think of a subject in Christian art called "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" (in Swedish "Anna Själv Tredje"), where Virgin Mary´s mother Anne holds both her and the Christ child in her knee. I find it an interesting composition, with the mirror-image of the woman, her arms empty there. And the wading bird on her shoulder that seems to correspond to some kind of beetle in the reflection. And that lizzard, what´s that about?
A googling of the artist reveals that she has made similar compositions with mothers and children, and reflections. She doesn´t seem to have a website, but she has been around for long, with many exhibitions, and there are some articles about her.
Actually, I think that the Swedish name of this subject (very similar to the German, and other European languages as well), which, if you translate it word by word, is "Anna Herself Third" is more evocative than "Virgin and Child with Saint Anne". It is almost like a short poem, a riddle of sort. Perhaps that is why it stuck in my head. Swedish singer-songwriter Anna Järvinen released an album a few years back also titled "Anna Själv Tredje". Here is a song from that album:
Also, spring is on the way: the birds are singing like crazy every morning. I think the chaffinch-train arrived on Monday, because three of them have been serenading since then from their selected trees. The magpie couple in the birch in front of the record store is at work mending the roof of their nest. And the hares are very scruffy-looking now, shedding their pretty winter fur. I am wearing summer shoes.
I have been following the blog Faith is Torment for a while, and it´s a great way to be introduced to a couple of new artists on a daily basis. It´s even a bit much, some days. Today I discovered Walid Siti, and I find myself very attracted to his work. This series of towers made me think of something that happened on a trip to Vienna, in 1992.
Austria can, to a Swede anyway, seem a bit like an operatic fairytale land, very cultured and pretty and, frankly, overwhelming. We were sitting at the breakfast table with a friend, and we were silently (possibly a bit hung over from the previous evening) admiring a print on the wall of Peter Bruegel´s famous painting "The Tower of Babel". Suddenly he says: "That castle, is that near here?"
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