From filmstrip to painting.
Workprocess from idea to painting:
Back in 1988 I where working with the musician Klaus Bau.
He had an orchester named The Distant Drums.
He asked if I would work out an idea for their light show during the concerts.
He would like it to be something like the oillamps that the hippies used, just different.
Since I was working at a media and culture house called Billedfabrikken, The Picture factory, at the time I had acces to some clear film, which was left over from the cartoon film productions.
I wanted to use it for some slide experiments.
I worked on the clear film with liquid tuch, which have an amasing light and colorinensity.
I then chosed the usedfull areas of the filmstrips and hereby created a number of colorfull slides.
The slide show was then meant to be projected on to various stagebackgrounds and perhaps the musicians clothes.
The foundation of the alternative slide was a reality.
Elements from the slide show was also used in one of the music videos, that later was created for the orchester, as well as an other music video, based solo on music and some of the slides.
Even back then I saw something in some of the slides and whised to use them on their own, at one point.
The process of working with liquid tusch on clear film contains an element of randomness,
partly because of how easy the ink flows, but also because the smooth surface of a clear film, these things in combination makes it difficult to control, even if you whish to do so.
On top of that, the surface that you are working on are quite small,
therefore it can be difficult to see the details before the ink is dry and the slide can be projected.
When working in ink there are no regrets once it is dryed up. These elements of uncontrollable processes and randomness, was a part that attracted me to the process.
During the years that have passed between 1988 and untill 2005, I have viewed the 300 slides repeatedly.
Once I began translating or transferering the qualities of the ink to canavas and acrylic, the slides that I have chosen becomes a reference for a new different image.
Often I did not follow the reference of the slides but moved beyone or I have taken it in a different direction.
The largest challange compared to my previous painting techniques, where to recreate or created something similar to the intensity of the intensity in the color of the ink, in acrylic on canvas.
I hve worked with a large number of painting tools, from brushes, toothbrushes, sponges and worn out rags,but the most important have been the quality of the colors itself.
I order to give the colors intensity and depth, I have worked with multiple layers of clear color.
The layers have often been very thin and mixed up with water untill the colorpaste are fluient or the color have later on been partly washed back off.
In the end varnish have played a part in bringing the colors to life.
References.
The paintings are abstract in terms of the lack of figurative elements in the images.
Most of the paintings are not an abstraction from anything in the surroundings that can be represented figuratively.
In general it is not an expressive abstraction in traditional terms, since I am not in the process working towards expressing anyparticular emotion or likewise.
they are what we could call clean abstraction or nonfiguration, only it looks diffrent from the majority of ths type of works, because of the process.
Descriptions of abstract art can be found here:Abstract art.
Descriptions of nonfigurative art can be found here:Nonfigurative.