The past months have been consumed by those little adoring monsters who wake us up at 6 am and demand food (oatmeal) pronto. I can’t say that I am completely coherent at that time in the morning, but I do manage to mix some milk and oatmeal a stick it in the microwave oven.

But things are about to change… We’re moving to the island of Bornholm, which is located on the far side of Sweden but nonetheless still belongs to the kingdom of Denmark. Our new home is on the sourthern tip of the island, very close to what I believe are some of the most amazing beaches in the world (bar the Maldives etc..)

Another major change is the fact that the twins are due to start in nursery in january which will free up a lot of creative time for my wife and I. So be prepared for an increase in the frequency of updates here on the blog.

Extra time also means I’ll have more time in the studio which I am planning on building in one of the barns (yes barn! – as in: “we bought a big farm built around a square”) , and expanding to a gallery later this summer. It’s the perfect setup, since I’ll have all of my critical facilities at home and at the same time the ability to showcase the work of myself and others.

Very soon the tiny town of Snogebæk will have it’s own cultural powerhouse, so if you’re visiting the island don’t forget to swing by us and get your daily fix of art.

In the meantime it’s Time to relax…

The Internet is doing to galleries what a bomb would do to the Fields Mall.
Sure, some brick and mortar stores still have relevance – much in the same way real world art shows still make sense. But galleries are doomed to lose their role as gatekeeper for the artist as well as the collector. Artists will find ways to host their own shows as oneoffs with established galleries or in empty storefronts. Paying the rent creates a need for cash upfront, but control and sales income remain with the artist.

As an artist, it more and more looks like a losing deal to surrender 50% of sales in return for hapless marketing and real estate on a physical gallery wall. Smart artists around the globe are now using their tech skills to connect directly with collectors as well as establish a permanent online record of their artistic activities. Instead of leaving a printed resume in a pile of similar ones at the gallery, Blogging is a powerful tool for documenting and communicating the artistic journey.

The balance of power is shifting back towards the artist and the collector. In this relationship the brand of the artist becomes everything as he performs to the dispersed audience of thousands of individuals.

But about the painting above – this is the next one in the lineup from the series “War is Coming Home” featuring scenes of war in our home country. What happens in the aftermath of terror? People stay home… Denmark is increasingly finding itself in the top of the list when terrorists want to make a statement. Maybe it’s time to rethink our foreign policy…
Enjoy!

I did find some time for a new series of paintings based on a piece I did earlier this year.
That painting was of Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen, featuring a burnt-out Humvee in front of the parading Royal Lifeguards.

The point of this series is to try to imagine what it would be like if the theatre of war was Denmark rather than some remote country like Afghanistan.
To many people in Denmark, the conflict in Afghanistan is costly, and hard to understand.
It’s remote, and whatever news-stories emerge on the evening news are hard to relate to.

What would happen if every news-story related to a location in Denmark?
The second painting in the series is posted below. It’s titled “Power Disruption” and features Christiansborg – home of the Danish parliament, with a burned-out bus in front. Enjoy!

For a while HDR has been regarded as a sort of artificial or unrealistic school of photography.
It was frowned upon by the photography establishment and until now not seen as a legitimate form in its own right. Many such photographers thought that the extreme dynamic range possible with HDR made the photographs “unrealistic” and not true to reality.

Until HDR emerged, everyone was used to the fact that a taking a photo meant committing to a certain exposure. Anyone who has tried photographing outside from whithin a building knows that the final photo either shows a proper lighting of the interior OR the exterior. That is, either the interior darker details are visible and the outside is a white blur OR the outside bright details, clouds etc are visible and the interior details of the room are a dark blur.

Traditional photography means you have to chose. But in real life we don’t have to chose. The eyes adjust to the proper sensitivity according to where we focus. The combined experience is that we can see BOTH the details in the clouds outside AND the darker details of the interior room. HDR works the same way – you get the best of both worlds, and a photo that is closer to the experience that you actually had when you were there.

Trey is a nice guy with a mission to promote HDR photography. He runs a blog at stuckincustoms.com that has tens of thousands of visitors every day, but decided to help other HDR photographers spread their work and generate traffic to their sites. So he created HDRspotting.com which works as a traffic generation engine. It’s a community by invitation where members can upload and share their work.

I have posted numerous HDR photos to HDRspotting.com, and as a result thousands of people have now seen my photos of the fairy tale castles and landscapes that are so common in Scandinavia it’s almost hard to spot them. Here’s an example of what I mean: the lake pavillion in central Copenhagen. Visible from a unique angle this winter because of the prolonged frost that made walking on the lakes possible.

Enjoy!

Go see for yourself!

The photos were shot on my trusty old Canon APS camera and I haven’t done much but applying some levels and curves in photoshop to try and counter the inherent noise in the original processed negatives.

Not much of a good time to look at, but I had to share these images that still haunt my mind.

As i leaned to lift the cover from the pram my beer spilled unto my pants. I had managed to drink one sip. Again classic. Todays HDR is from another more successful day in the palm house of the botanical gardens. Enjoy!

Mundane issues become problems, questions become accusations, insecurity becomes certainty.
When it works, everything is rosy, when it doesn’t – hell.
Cognition is what separates us from cows. But God, they do look peaceful.

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.

“Ørestaden” is a newly built part of Copenhagen that used to be a desolate field on the island of Amager. That was before they built the Bridge of Øresund connecting Denmark and Sweden. At the time the idea behind Ørestaden was to create a huge area of urban dwellings for the growing population of the combined Copenhagen/Malmö region.
And so they built. Each new housing project more ambitious than the next. Each architect had his own idea of a magnificent building. Every square meter of allowed retailspace was jammed together in “Fields” – The largest shopping mall in Scandinavia. No cafes, no restaurants, no cosy little places to hang out. No-one thought about the urban area as a whole and what it takes to create what James Kunstler calls a place worth caring about.

Sadly Ørestaden now looks to become yet another ghetto. It’s simply not a place that anyone want’s to visit because it doesn’t speak to us. It’s bleak and inaccessible. From an architectural standpoint many of the buildings in Ørestaden are succesful. VM bjerget – “Mountain Dwellings” is an example of this, having won 4 international awards. Blame it on the recession, but apartments in VM -bjerget are now being offered for rent at reduced prices.

Art has many of the same characteristics as architecture, Not coincidentally the Danish School of Architecture is housed in the Royal Academy of Arts. So what makes some art more popular than other? Technical prowess, Depth, Originality, Visual aesthetics? Art may possess all these qualities yet still not hit home with the audience.

Whether we like it or not, the brand of the artist as well as the accessibility of his work is a deciding factor.
I feel comfortable owning a piece by an artist whose story and background I know, whose reputation is well known in general, whose art appeals to me and is easily accessible.
Does accessible mean that the art is shallow and has no depth? Ask David Hockney

The value of art has historically been closely linked to the story of the artist.
The new paradigm of art is really not new at all – The artist is responsible for maintaining and increasing the value of his art. Though storytelling, through promotion and any other means possible.

I am committed to this task, blogging is just one tool.
Enjoy todays Mirror Mirror (top).
Buy it here:
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