December 29, 2013

On the Effects of Christmas Delirium and the Nice Manners of Japanese Dragons

The dragon (which I started on last week, see below) is taking shape nicely, but slowly. I finally got around to giving the poor thing a head. The Japanese dragon is a good and friendly creature, they say it brings luck and prosperity and suchlike and it will only set fire to things when it's in a very bad mood, so don't you worry.


For lagniappe, here's a little thing that dear Ms. Linda came up with the other day. In her nightly photograph of a hydro plant (or a similar thingamajig) she distinctly saw Santa Claus; the lit parts being the eyes and the water was the beard, etc. -- and frustratingly, she was the only one who saw this. ("A clear case of Christmas Delirium", as she said.) So she hinted that I might do something surreal on this and well, it's worth a sketch at least, which follows:


Dear readers, Happy New Year!
See you in 2014.
-- Joakim.


December 22, 2013

Season's Greetings with Dragons in Progress

I have started on a new painting in oil. I can't say too much, but the result is supposed to hang above someone's very real samurai sword. The commissioner wanted a Japanese dragon and the rest is up to me.



So I decided to fill the poor thing with Nipponiana. I've never been to Japan, but a good deal of naïvité, blissful ignorance and a little wholly thinking might help. All is to be encompassed by said creature, scales and all. The rest is just let loose; and all of sudden there's a little airplane (a Mitsubishi Zero, I think) and some kind of cherry blossom...


We'll see what happens next -- after a short holiday break, that is.


December 15, 2013

Fine Fish Don't have to Answer Phones

Being an Operator who has to answer phones all day long is no fun, not fun at all, or so my friend told me. The endless plethora of voices cease to be human, they fade into some kind of nagging grey mould inside your eardrums and the bitterness of having to deal with them all the livelong day must soon reach toxic levels. Incidentally, I had just -- but did not think of it right then -- drawn this fish for a book that I might complete someday. The fish is a Northern Pike, and they are Fine Fish, yesssir. And Fine Fish do not have to answer phones. Ever.



The cell phone is modelled on one that I once had -- just a few years ago really. Nothing wrong with it, but outdated. It's thus a little Retro already, and will be very much so when I'm done with the book, if ever. Then, If I'm still on the track, the Grey Mould might want me to buy yet another cell phone.



December 08, 2013

Whale and Mission Impossible


And every once in a while one comes to the point when one must draw a line, deadline the whole thing. It won't get any better. It is probably both better and worse than I think myself, and now it's time to put up Whale and Mission Impossible for sale on Saatchi and Saatchi, come and get it while it's hot... Heartfelt kudos to Anita for being my muse and forest. The whole thing looks like this


I did the background last: The reflections of the sad dinghy as it is mirroring its sorrow gently in the lake, how the grass is shining as it reflects the glow from the Anita Maples, etc.


And now (id est, next week) for something completely different.

December 01, 2013

Beauty and Mystery

A forest of Dancing Anita Maples (see previous week) is taking shape nicely, or at least the finest grove you saw. (Which is easy as I work with such good raw materials; her inner and outer beauty. It is somehow satisfying to use Photoshop, normally used in the service of distorting natural beauty, to re-create real, albeit surreal beauty from scratch.)


And this is a little detail that only I and a Certain Other might decipher. But as a gentle hint you may note that this sad dinghy (with a heart well pierced) has but one oar. I think that we would row all the happier if there were two -- preferably two matching ones, preferably of the same length and kind. Otherwise we'll merely row 'round and 'round and never really get anywhere.


November 24, 2013

Curiouser and Curiouser

Now I've had both Vernissage and Finissage, and meanwhile the Whale painting is becoming "curiouser and curiouser", as Alice said. It has also become vastly more beautiful, as it is now inhabited by my dear friend Anita the Dancer. She is a glowing, flaming Maple.



She didn't mind being turned into a tree (she has been Anita in Wonderland before and knows that these things happen) but wondered a little why. Told her I didn't know. Had her in mind. And she does like maple leaves. Add to this a dancer, shining with a beautiful soul, and the result is settled with deep roots.



 

November 18, 2013

Come Down to Larry's

There's one week left on the exhibition at Larry's Corner (Street address: 35 Grindsgatan) -- Embassy of the United States of Diaspora in Stockholm. Wonderful Americans and Weird ones, a charming Canadian lady and some perfect extraterrestrials etc. etc. -- humanoids too odd and lovely and human for the New World or the Old all wash up here; and Swedes weird enough join them. I sort of fit in.



I add a bit more on my sad whale (see one fortnight below) while waiting for the week to pass, and now there's some character with it that -- I don't know what this fellow is supposed to do; rub and brush probably, but I'm sure it's impossible. An overwhaleing task.


At Larry's you find everything from, say, Japanese Psychedelic Jazz to hard to-find LP's and DVD's; or next-to-banished magazines and fanzines, fabulously quirky books on any odd subject and... things you just got to have because you never could imagine that such odd stuff existed. And there's coffee too, and hot toast. (Dumb Stockholmians serve them lukewarm. You have to go here, where sandwiches know how to Steam.) My paintings are fine here. One week more to go.



(Detail from Book Tree -- (c) Joakim Ceder 2011 -- Light summerly strokes of oil on gesso'ed paper, ink and a few aquarelle colours. Now for sale on the exhibition.)













November 11, 2013

Vernissage Fun

Poetry-music-and-dance-mischmasch with my friends, Peter Palm the Poet and Anita Emthén, this excellent dancer; apart from the stanzas this was all quite improvised on my Vernissage. First a little fun while we're waiting for poetry...




November 03, 2013

Hors d’Oeuvres

Just a little snack while you wait; the upcoming exhibition will hold more small works than large ones, but this one is a little extreme. With a little luck, this miniature will be shown now in true size; 3.5 x 2.5 inches; oil on gesso'ed paper.


It is now framed in the cutest little frame you can imagine, and still won't demand much space. Let's have a close look. Eyeballs, anyone?


Or perhaps you'd like a little whale? You'd better have it now, I see that the poor thing is crying coffee already. Digital pen --- No dearie, I don't know why it does. I'll have to finish the whole work. Then you may tell me. Otherwise, I still won't know, shan't know. This late greying Autumn is taking a gentle turn from Sad to Sadder, or so I feel, and all things that stall thinking are blessings.


October 27, 2013

Framing Insanity

As my Dance-and-Poetry-Vernissage is drawing nearer, I am practising unusually hard on the piano, wild reveries that are interspersed with frantic framing and cutting and matting, see image below...
 



Anyway, this is how it feels. Electric pen on electric paper. And, happily, no need for either framing nor matting. 



October 21, 2013

Autumnal Pencil

Autumn is falling down and away, becoming and going in the same time; everything is gently but completely broken and fragmented as those beautiful transient forms known as maple leaves, leaving an increasingly melancholic bittersweetness behind as colours and light fade.
(Continued below)


(Pencil drawing, with discrete Photoshop tinting.)

In this vein I wrote a little paraphrasis on a Poem attributed to Emperor Hadrian:

And now ye sail away
the breeze is good and raw,
the river running one way down
and no change of course is needed.
Is there another shore out there?
Or is it sweet just to go?
Soon we have lost you in the fog
and for you
we're but mist
and dampness.


The best translation of Hadrian's original is, in my opinion, this one by Reverend James Ford (early 19th c.)

Say, fleeting Spirit, gentle, dear,
The body’s guest and comrade here,
Whither, Oh whither, now away?
Into what regions wilt thou stray?
Pale, numb, and desolate; no more
To jest and trifle, as before.


It is flowing, yet as I understand true to the original. Nothing can match, though, its melody and rhythm; falling gently as maple leaves:

Animula vagula blandula
hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis in loca
pallidula, rigida, nudula?
Nec ut soles dabos iocos.

-- Now, are we sad enough to enjoy Autumn properly? Cheers.

October 14, 2013

Geese and Gouache

Fall time. Painting outdoors, your fingers go numb and soon the rest of the body too, but it's worth it -- the colours, the colours! It was a grey and bitter day, so I brought a piece of grey cardboard, some ink and white gouache. Next, I let a little autumnal watercolour seep into the thick paper mass.   



Voilà. By the way; the birds, my cackling company while freezing and painting, were Barnacle Geese. We have plenty.



October 07, 2013

Poster for My Next Show...

Again, we celebrate the Simultaneous Week; a week so stuffed with Everything in the Same Time that it is strictly impossible to blog about. I am planning for my November exhibition (Larry's corner, Grindsgatan 35, Stockholm, Sweden, November 9:th!) -- Vernissage at 1'o Clock, while the poetry-music-and-dance-mischmasch with Poet P. Palm and Prima Ballerina A. Emthén begins at two. (Piano: Myself.) The latter spectacle will be played and danced quite ad hoc around the stanzas, all improvised, and might end in just any fashion. Exciting! -- The poster will look something like this:


I am also trying to paint a few new things to replace all the goodies sold in September. There's beautiful fall colours out there, right now.

September 30, 2013

More Art to the People

I'd like to recommend an interesting article by fellow painter Ruthy on art hoaxes -- modern masters that turned out to be four years old, chimpanzee, or even made up -- and an eager world believed it, gallerists, writers and all. "Today the art world is glamorous, mysterious and expensive", she says -- I am pondering how to make it less mysterious and expensive -- buying art should be an everyday thing; "buy milk, sugar, art, eggs!". In order to make my art affordable I am struggling to get my art posters (the series made in collaboration with poet Peter Palm) finished before next exhibition. This is one of the latest ones (still waiting for the poems to be inserted) it's scanned today and much remains to do with the colour balance & so on...

Original size for all works are A4/std. letter size, they'll be blown up to at least twice that size due to all the details that I put into them. (On my exhibitions, you often see people looking around after a magnifying glass.) We figured they might stand resizing, such as this little fish...
(The original fins are gold, actually, but it's difficult to convey this feeling to a printed poster or even to my scanner. Still working on it. A lot of cheating might be needed to make this look natural.)

September 23, 2013

Dancers, with a few ramblings.

Art should be wild, unharnessed, illegally beautiful and entirely unpredictable.  

 

It ought to be Beautiful, albeit in a wicked way, as a protest against the ugliness of the world in general, not mentioning the art world. There's something suspicious about beauty; it appeals to the the unruly senses and to the masses -- and the sourest academics, well bottled and preserved in their textually spiced winegear of theories, can not understand it. Long live the revolution.

Wild, Unharnessed: One would think twice before using this wild beauty for greeting cards (or, at least, check the address twice). Art without straight lines and common nonsense, the aforesaid wickedness and unsettling hints of deepest insanity, is the nutritious soil in which weeds can grow and bloom. The wild flowers of beauty blossom despite all chaos-through-order and discipline that we're currently suffering, they're the herbal cure to concrete blocks and timetables. 

Last but not least: Entirely Unpredictable -- thus keeping the stove so hot that you may cook a nicely bubbling stew of all dull ideas that kept you enslaved. Serve them with a funny, ridiculous light; these ghosts of the mind, now gently poached, were only dangerous as long as enough people took them seriously; security almighty, holy economy and whatnot. Laugh at those silly things -- as heartily and loud as possible. Have fun. (That's an order.) Create art. Dance.  

September 16, 2013

Out of Order

I am sorry that this blog isn't working today. Currently, I'm writing this on a little cell phone (amidst constant protests from the browser, which thinks that I can't do that) and this thingy won't let me upload any pictures properly. (I tried to crudely paste one below, just to see what happens; voilà, sunset as seen from the dinghy -- might work, might not.) Something slightly sarcastic has been sent to blogger.com, and we'll see...

September 09, 2013

What's Brewing?

Well Dearies, the Artist had his little Vernissage. Wonderful people showed up from near and afar. Quite a few works went, including the Tree Nursery and other stuff that I'm afraid that I can't show you now. But there are other works waiting and brewing and boiling; I'll try to remember if I had a life before planning this show, or think of all the wonderful things that one could do instead of having a life, and my mind is bubbling like this:






(I made this sketch a few days ago. Digital pen, electric ink, analogue fatigue. It's not serious art. In passim, there's no serious art anymore, nor serious artists, merely serious art dealers and the serious art dealers are dealers and thus not serious about art; now please prove me wrong? -- No -- stop! -- Obviously -- whatever I'm going to do now after my 13:th Vernissage, I must by no means think.) 

September 02, 2013

With an Appetite for Pessimism




Showing my high regard for both left and right, one up in the blue believing in the Magic Market, the other up in a rosy red belief in Revolution and Masses.



Made with steel pen, aqua colour, footage for the cloud and Photoshop for general tweaking and mirroring, it is available on Saatchi as usual and it's named...



 ..."They'll Eat You Anyway". 
 .
 
 

August 26, 2013

Tinnitus


OoooooOOoo! AaaaaA-aaa! iiii & IIII endlessly over and over: This unassortment of noises is known as Tinnitus and it is not merely an audiological condition, it is our Curriculum Vitae, the noisy River Styx that our Life flows (and is drowning) in. Be it a rock concert or a traffic concert or any other disconcerting concert, the ears must sooner or later respond with their own from the depths of the cochleas. It would look something like this:


It must also be for sale on Saatchi Online, as I have to add to the visual noise of the world, where we walk with tinnitus ringing in our ears, bingbonging in our eyes and wailing in our souls. I don't do it in order to be seen. I am rather visible. The little problem is that everything is so delightfully visible, audible and so on, and to live and work in this chaos-beyond-chaos (disorder so great that one must take it for granted, even normal) is like selling paintings to the blinded and music for the deaf -- but most occupations seem to be this worthwile. I sometimes wonder if I'm to go on with my noise as counter-noise -- this is what draws me to Surrealism in the first place; it is just as illogical as the rest of the world, merely in a different way -- or if one should try to ignore it and serve visions of something different, something better, a world of greenery, laughter, dance and gentle sunshine and other sugary things. In both cases, it would add to the general noise. And noise causes tinnitus.

August 19, 2013

Last-of-Summer Painting, part II


While the real summer left, there are plenty of echoes every other day. So I finished this ambivalent thing (part naïvism, part total disregard for reality – as there’s carelessness in the other direction too) in ambivalent weather; borrowing a garden when weather was fine and burrowing inside my skull when it rained.  



I haven’t bothered with a straight horizon. The Earth is round, and I’m sure that various animals that live in trees -- and others that live less horizontal lives -- perceive this arbitrary boundary between Heaven and Sea very differently. The little castle is an idea that I’ve borrowed from Dutch master M. C. Escher. It’s the one thing in this little oval that I’ve planned with care, straight lines and all, proving that straight lines are no less misleading than curves. We’re merely brought up into thinking so. (It’s one out of many notions in our general miseducation, Presuppositions 101.)  




Then I went a little lazy and gave the apples some quite vague connection with the ground (they might ripen very slowly, and if they fall at all they need not necessarily fall earthwards). And so I signed. Voilà. Now I’ll go and see if I should make more matting and framing for my September exhibition. Might have enough works already.

August 12, 2013

End-of-Summer Painting

August. Still summer, but with a feeble, unstable feeling and occasional showers. Autumn is waiting around the corner, rather close during the evenings. A hot cup is good then...



...but 'round Noon it's still Summertime, with sunshine and butterflies. This one -- half a memory of half a moment -- was brown, spotted and incessantly fluttering, almost up in my face and then just gone. (It quickly realized that I wasn't a flower and this was a serious flaw in my character and probably not the only one.) So I settled for the Idea of a Brown Spotted Butterfly in General; decorative free miniature rather than impressionist strokes (lacking clear impressions).



I make a point of not planning too much. There's a new Vernissage on September 7:th, and I am really too busy framing and matting and cutting and measuring etc. so I'll paint as Time Almighty allows me to. I wonder what a cooler, rainier season shall do to this stream of details as I'm approaching the bottom of the little oval canvas. Summer fluttered by. Soon it might be gone.

 


August 05, 2013

Back to Nature

Clear, pristine waters, laced with an archipelago of singing forests... Let's go Back to Nature! -- but I wonder if we can, and soon I found biomechanical doubts with cogwheels and all leaking into my dream, as I painted it from my boat late in July.  

It's not very large; ink&aqua on A4 (roughly letter size) paper. This miniature is now competing on Saatchi Online (where one might also buy the original; far below sensible prize, if you pardon my itch to say so) in their Showdown.  

I'm happy that the swallows (resized, below) turned out so well -- summer is not Summer without these wonderful beings swooshing about.




It might also interest you that the tree is based on a Chestnut tree. (Another resized detail.)





 






July 29, 2013

City Lights (Finished at Last)


...after many breaks. (It could also be named My Muse and I -- haven't decided yet.) Nevertheless, these two figures add a humane aspect...

 
...to this adequately surreal and confusing image; oil, 16x12 in. on paper w. special coating.

 
 
I think my favourite detail is the broken car (broken in two, in fact...)

 

Perhaps the rooftops were inspired by the kind of chimneys they have in Paris. 

 

And the accordionist... No, I don't really know. Now the thing 'll have to dry for a couple of weeks. Cheers :)

July 22, 2013

The More We Get Together...

...the happier we shall be. It's good to get out once in a while. The kind of person that can spend hours and days perfecting a square inch on canvas isn't necessarily Society's Pet, and this hermitage is ultimately Bad for Business and your mental curriculum in general. I've found that cultural workers dream the same kind of dreams. But our lives and conditions become very different depending on what we do; if we're painters, writers, or (my antipode) the restlessly touring musician who has to play Everywhere, meeting Everyone in the process. Woof!

Anyhow: Your painter was a little tired of playing solo. So this was made in cooperation with poet Peter Palm...


...who has written summer, surfs and sunshine into twelve very short verses; they're ordered into groups of three, which we found would make four very neat little posters. Here is the first, with spaces from top left to lower right for the stanzas.

The poems are very open-ended and so are my works. That's a happy marriage, and the resulting posters will be for sale during my two exhibitions this Fall (or -- of course -- if you ask me, which you're very welcome to do...) And during these exhibitions Life will be a little more social and musical, and I'll sing your friends are my friends 
And my friends are your friends 
The more we get together
the happier we shall be...
     -- etc.

(A resized detail.)

July 15, 2013

The Measureless Pride of an Autodidact


I originally intended this to be something bitter, but decided to save the self-poisoning to another week, if any. Instead I’ll tell you about the joy, the light that one feels as a well educated autodidact. Instead of telling you about doors that are shut and barred, this should be on other doors that I’ve opened myself, through work and study.  

Click/tap to resize.

I took a little art at College, without much theory at all but a lot of practice – coal on paper, mostly. I had this wonderful teacher who really only gave me one advice – To Be Daring – and it has been the best advice that I ever had, lasting unto this day.

Already in the words themselves one sees the difference between teaching oneself and needing a teacher. Those who went to Art Schools came to Art as pupils, per definition. Pupil, says the dictionary, is Latin for a little boy, a pupillus. The pupil is someone that needs constant care and supervision; sit still, learn this, shut up. But Art really hit me when I was a Student. (I already was a perpetual student of History and Philosophy, thus well prepared for autodidactics.) Studere – I don’t need the dictionary for this – means to study something actively, perfectly voluntarily and rather independently. The student needs a certain kind of zeal, she regards dusty old truths with at least three fiercely hypercritical eyes; she needs endurance, imagination and a mental flexibility to the point of yoga… I love students.



I took up practice, hard practice again. That’s the best thing one can do. I also found good books on the subject: I recommend the thoroughly methodical John Wilkinson and parts of Betty Edwards’ classic, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – some of her exercises are silly and some very educating. (Go through them all.)  

I also took care to visit a few exhibitions and museums, notepad in hand. Photographs rarely tell you how the brushstrokes wander and flow, you seldom get to see details enough. (It was particularly enlightening to find a few unfinished masterpieces at various stages of incompletion.) I enjoy talking to other artists, giving and receiving opinions and hints. There’s always something new to learn. But above all, I had to steal Time, practising time, when Society thought that I was studying something “useful” or at least marginally so or searching for a job that I didn’t want and didn’t know how to do. True freedom always has to be stolen. 


As an autodidact, there are many things that I don’t do by the book. I could’ve been more methodical at times. But one also has the strength to say No when the books and schools are entirely in up the blue, No to theories worth doodley-squat. Everything that I’ve learned, through experiments, endless hours with pens, brushes and whatnot, works. A certain strength emanates from the fact and feeling that it was you who went through all this and endured all that and persisted in order to get to your present level. You own your skill. 


I am allied to no posh art school, and consequently no gallerist owns me. It is an economical weakness and a moral strength. Thus there has been nothing to inflate my name or worth. My customers are mine, they came to me on their own accord and I’ve never had to talk them into buying – I don’t know how to do that. (I’ve kept to amoeba level marketing; sending out cards prior to Vernissage to the regulars, bothering to keep a homepage etc.) You can’t maintain gallery prices when you sell to ordinary people – but when they buy, that’s proof enough that the works were worth every penny. To be an autodidact is to be true.





.    

July 08, 2013

Poppies


A bit of art pour l'art, art for its own sake between my ramblings: My usual inquarelle on paper.
 

 (Tap/click to resize.)
 
The reddish orange, shimmering effect is attained by adding splashes of red or yellow, wait and let dry. Then add the other colour, wait, then the first again. And so on. Every layer is visible through the others. You don't get this effect with one readily mixed hue -- or without patience.