daylight

Daylight

When I painted Kiev, I worked from an image I found online of a bombed façade in Ukraine. When I wasn’t satisfied with the depiction, I drowned the painting in solvent and covered the surface with newspaper. When I pulled the paper away, flames appeared across the entire image. It was almost eerie.

The sky exists in the entirety sky. I was in Spain, sitting on a balcony, intending to paint the sunset. The dusk came faster than I expected, and soon I was sitting in darkness, still painting. I mixed all the colors I saw in the sky and arranged them in heaps beside one another. I find the shifts in color fascinating because they reveal something about the distance to the sun. I then spread the heaps of paint across the canvas and observed the result. I pressed the paint very hard with a heavy spatula, perhaps the kind used by muralists. I pressed it maybe forty times, until the colors blended into one another.

The white light. I’ve been sitting down daily, creating almost one painting per day, always with no idea of what I’m going to do. I wrote a text I had planned to present at the exhibition, but it never came to fruition. It was about sitting down with a sense of wanting to reason, yet realizing that this is not the place for it. I want the work to tell me something. And "What happens if?" is a thought that drives me. I’ve stopped trusting my intellect in the way I once did. How this sun came to be, I can barely explain. But my fascination with white light comes from a friend who told me about it after waking up from a coma.

Relationship drama arose during the installation. I wanted to include the phenomenon of projections from a psychological perspective, regarding certain views I held about our recent past. But I didn’t want it to be read as an illustration. While Edit was helping me during the installation, we discussed different angles of projections. She started talking about reflections, and the conversation moved on to mirror neurons, as receivers of projections. I don’t remember how the prism found its way into the process, but I lost control of the thought as the image created itself, and it no longer felt like an illustration.

The two small birds attached with magnets on the painting Heaven are actually three separate works that ended up dancing together. One of the birds has a fire blanket attached to it, which I then threw into the fire. People have commented on the “bird theme,” though I never intended to call it that. The silhouettes have followed me for a long time, and I’ve always seen them as a painterly framework. I’ve almost never thought about them looking like birds. So, it has been more about the history of painting itself.

At the center of the room stands a large black frame of this kind, titled Framework, leaning against my worktable. Nearby is a totem, a sculpture that has had a rather practical purpose. I’ve kept it above my altar, where I speak with higher powers.

It contains many objects I’ve collected, each with sentimental value. A fragment of the last cup from a set I inherited from my beloved grandmother. A small Ethiopian opal. A piece of a pipe I smoked as a teenager. A keyring a friend bought for me in India, engraved with the word *"Wicked"*, because I often used that expression. A black square—a plexiglass sample I received in Copenhagen that reminds me of Malevich. My cast teeth. At the bottom, a type of meteorite whose name I don’t know. All of this is woven together and suspended on a microphone stand, with a microphone connected to wireless speakers, creating feedback and delay. Fragmented Feedback.

Been through this a thousand times. The same subject repeats itself, though less frequently these days. I sit down, stare at the canvas, and start painting. It’s the only stable point at that moment. I’ve been through this a thousand times before, I think. It’s the only thing that calms me. And then these birds appear again.

Later, Swans. The Heron. One evening, Edit said to me that it’s interesting how the birds have no heads. "Considering what you usually talk about. About the body." I hadn’t even thought about it.

This is what I love about creating this way—it gives you something to reflect on. Meanings sneak their way in. I can’t think things like that up myself. Or perhaps it’s simply that I’m not interested in, or impressed by, the things I’ve thought up. I don’t know.

Much of this has been created in daylight. I’ve rarely used artificial lighting in the studio. It’s been soothing for my eyes and a welcome change.