Day Fourteen – Friday January 5 – 2018. Starting at 15:00
1 hour, 40 min
30cm x 30cm
Oils
Thirty minutes cycling to work before dawn. Teaching until 12:30. 12:45 cycling about an hour with a heavy loaded bike trolley. Putting the load on my back in a rucksack. Hiking uphill about half an hour. Organizing my stuff. Painting one hour and forty minutes. Dusk. Firing my headlamp. Hiking about twenty minutes back to my bike in the dark. Cycling a short half an hour.
Who needs an indoor gym!?
So you see the painting session is just a fraction of the time spent. Is it possible to create stunning artwork under these conditions. I haven’t even mentioned the chill, or the natural light shutting more and more of. Every painting is put here on the world wide web for anyone to watch. Some of them are better than others. Some are embarrassing for me to have on display. Why then do this!? Well, that’s because the painting part is just that – a part of it.
This summer I visited Louisianna Art Center north of Copenhagen to see the work of Marina Abramovic which were presented there. That inspired me immensely. Whatch this short video:
She puts herself to the ultimate physical tests until she is exhausted. Obviously artwork is not to be explained, but I can tell you my own understanding of it. For me it’s about fighting with myself and with my surroundings. It’s about showing my success and my failures. It’s about getting to understand how I’m connected to this physical world, and I am a part of it. I try to be aware of my own physical situation. I try to get involved. Listen to her about drinking a glass of water! The ordinary task is put into an extraordinary one.
In this project I always paint from the same place. I never change position more than about ten meters. Sometimes I consider the great vista, and other times just the details around my feet. When I am climbing the hill up to my place here, I constantly think about the task of that very special day. How will the ice look like? What about that little rock, the straws …? Every time I find something new. This is my fourteenth painting out of forty. I wonder what the rest will bring.
How often do we just rush from place to place trying to reach the other place!? Are we present in our lives? Are we really rooted?
The set-up.
The new painting lit with my headlamp after sunset.
Magne