I’m using Rembrandt soft pastels for the new Pillory project. I like the dusty feel when I smear the color unto the canvas. Not like the greasy feel of traditional oil pastels.
Soft pastels create a dry look, almost silky, making it hard to resist touching the canvas.

I can blend the colors very easily by rubbing my fingers.
When I need a glossy area of color I use acrylic paint or an Edding permanent marker.
Coupled with delicate white lines, this creates a perfect shiny effect on the blurry background of soft pastel.

The result is a shallow depth of field – like shooting portraits with a 1,2f aperture: A super sharp and crisp face on a blurry background.

The Gatekeeper. The gallery is 4 steep steps up from street level. Very prohibitive when entering with a pram, but I managed somehow.
At the outset I am not saying that bringing 2 4-month-old toddlers to an art show is necessarily a good idea, but at least it got me thinking about the way traditional galleries approach their audience.

White floors, white walls, white ceiling. The traditional way of presenting art is to remove it from it’s context. This serves to enforce the notion that the item showed really IS art and eliminates any doubt in the eyes of the observer. This is one of the cornerstones of the “Found Objects” branch of art which claims anything can be art as long as it’s removed from it’s context. Think only of Damien Hirsts Sharks or Duchamps urinals.

Intimidating. The traditional art gallery is not for everyone. Whether this intimidating atmosphere is intended to discourage the observer from questioning the artistical quality of the items showed or simply to attract and repel certain segments of viewers is open for debate.
It’s probably a little bit of both though.

The traditional gallery is dying.
Like the cartoon? check Out Hugh Macleods work.

It’s located in the Meat Packing district of Copenhagen. Some of the district is now inhabited by artists, and I have my studio in a shared space called “Slagtehus 40” (Slaughterhouse 40) which opened only last summer.
As a former slaughtery it’s a rough space – walls covered with tiles, floors with epoxy to make it easy to clean off the blood from the cattle and swine being butchered here..
The place still smells like an animal. Partly from the traces of blood, partly from the catering firm housed downstairs. I have no idea what they’re making, but it doesn’t seem mouth watering.

My space is in the corner of a larger shared room, edges marked by tape on the floor.
It’s not huge, but I have enough room to work and store some of my previous pieces.
In the corner I have my desk on which I draw, sketch, blog and communicate using my mac.
My windows face the courtyard where in the summerevenings the hip young crowds gather in front of the bars “Karriere” and ” Jolene”.
The floor and walls is where I paint my acrylic works.

I like it here. It’s my space.

I am thinking about the Danish soldiers in Afghanistan these days.
Two separate events have fueled this.

Danish Colonel Lars Møller published his book “we kill – and live with it”
Danish documentary director Janus Metz’ Cannes screening of his Documentary titled “Armadillo” shot in Helmand, Afghanistan.
Both focus on the reality of war and the mental effects on 20 year-olds being sent to the front line.

Now the Danish media are all over it. The microphone is held to the usual voices that deliver the same soundbites as always.
Journalism is so lazy. The job now boils down to scanning the rolodex for people on either side of the argument and then rehearsing them ahead of the “discussion” on primetime TV.

Of course there are plenty of “experts” and politicians willing to deliver the goods. It’s all about promotion in the end.

What I don’t get, is the extreme hypocrisy of people (especially politicians) that condemn the actions of soldiers operating in a reality that they themselves have never experienced and would rather forget.

Maybe Møller and Metz will have helped to open the eyes of these same people. Maybe then we can have a true discussion about why the soldiers were sent in the first place.

As always with war, there is plenty of artistical inspiration.
I started working on this painting because I wanted to bring home the reality of war. Afghanistan like Denmark was a monarchy between 1933 and 1973.

I can’t help but wonder what the danish debate would sound like if this painting was reality.

So your boss gives you an assignment –
1. “I need something, on my desk, whenever you feel like it”
2. “I need a presentation, on my desk, whenever you feel like it”
3. “I need a 5 slide presentation, on my desk, whenever you feel like it”
4 ” I need a 5 slide text-free presentation selling our product, on my desk, whenever you feel like it”
5. “I need a 5 slide text-free presentation selling our product, on my desk, in 1 hour”

Which assignment is more likely to ignite your creative spark?
Which is more likely to make you get it done anytime soon?
Which is more likely to focus your attention on the assignment?

Freedom is great, it’s the very reason why I don’t do 9-5 very well.
Too much freedom though, can kill the creative spark, make you apathetic, and make you less likely to focus your attention.

Cure? – Create rules, constraints and time limits on your work. and stick to them – well at least try to.
Afterall you’re the Boss, no?

This little watercolour above sums it up nicely.
For those receiving the post in your email inbox, remember to enable pictures or click the blue bolded header in the top of the mail.
Enjoy!

Given the choice between paying 5 dollars in parking fee OR risking a 1/1000 chance of paying a parking fine of 5000 dollars, which would you choose?

Given the choice between keeping your decent paying dayjob OR joining that new startup company which may land a 20,000,000 dollar IPO in 1 year, which would you choose?

Given the choice between leaving your decent paying dayjob for 1 year OR risk missing out on the 20,000,000 dollar IPO, which would you choose?

Risk perception is different for gains and losses. For this reason we often prefer uncertainty when faced with gains but certainty when faced with losses.

The only way to get around this is to frame the same dilemma in a different way. How do you frame your life?
Are you comfortable with the choices you have made if you present them to yourself in a different way?

In the dilemma above, feel free to replace IPO with: travelling the world, becoming a stay-at-home parent, getting creative, taking up acting, building houses in Haiti etc. etc.

Enjoy “The life of the artist” below: the second in a series of 3 paintings.

“The life of the artist” from Artworks by Carl Frederik Waage Beck

Which leaves me a few minutes to post the latest painting in a series of 3 that I did find time (somehow miraculously) to make a the other day.

I have been working with some new ideas on perspective and these paintings are an effort to keep it neat and clean. No fuzzy throwing around with paint this time folks!

The inspiration for these paintings comes from my childhood memories of Lego ads. These ads were always showing a scene with a myriad of little legomen inhabiting a toyworld of plastic trees and houses. Everything was always clean and immaculate. Nothing left to chance.

So in a leap from what I have been doing previously, namely letting order emerge from disorder, portraits emerge from little random splotches of paint, I felt like tightening things up a bit.

The painting “Into the void”, is my take on what it means to reject 9-5 and embark on that creative journey that so many of us long for. It’s a crasy thing to do, no signposts, no safetynet, but what about the alternative?

The perception of risk changes according to your situation. In my case, what it took to get real about the art, was a kick in the ass and 6 months of pay. What do you need to take the leap?

Enjoy!

Into the Void from Artworks by Carl Frederik Waage Beck

I shot this video the other day: wondering what the famed Danish arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen would have spent his time doing during his trips up north.

Remember, this was before the time of the Jedi…

Knud now spends his days looking at the Baltic sea from Skovshoved north of Copenhagen.
His statue was placed there in 1963.

Hava a look and enjoy ;o)

Why?” asks the host.

“Well, if I told you, you could just go home and copy my work” he replies.

Sure, there’s a craft in CREATING art, but chalking the value of your art up to some industrial secret seems sad.

Sure, anyone who wanted to spend their life praticing their craft so that they could be copying your work could do so, but to them I say – “Enjoy your life!”

So whats the secret about the value of art? The secret is that there is no secret. No one can copy your creative spark. A copy of Van Goghs sunflowers is well – a copy.

I got the feeling this artist was scared his art might lose its value if he told everyone how he made it.

Corporations often use so called Non Disclosure Agreements NDA’s to ensure that industrial secrets shared with business partners are not divulged to third parties. This makes sense since the value of a company rests on knowhow, patents etc.

Take The Coca Cola Company which fiercely protects the recipe for Coca Cola because this recipe is what makes Coce taste the way it does. What would happen if another company could claim that they make the exact same product?

Well obviously there is also the matter of branding, shaping the bottle etc., but clearly the value of the The Coca Cola Company would deteriorate.

What about artists then?

What happens when someone copies your method?

I hope you copy mine is all I’m sayin’

Enjoy this beauty as she emerges in 8x speed! Music by Bon Iver because his music is great. Go buy his album everyone. Seriously!

From Artworks by Carl Frederik Waage Beck