Blogil

It’s been over two years since I was approached by a director who had heard about a project of mine called Black Milk. It was a story set in a highly stylized and minimalistic world – a world seemingly impossible to imagine when told. I had a screenplay without words and dialogue.

Luckily I’ve been a visionary with trained abilities to visualize… I had a series of paintings – surreal and symbolically laden landscapes inviting to a trip of subtle nightmares that did not need to be explained. I witnessed great enthusiasm around my paintings. Though everyone seemed to understand the potential of these visuals, no one could really point out what they were about. One of the biggest enthusiasts was of course the soon to become director for the project, Skjalg Molvær.

Together with the director, we started developing this project into a film format. It was decided to become a short film. I got deeply into storytelling, read myself up on screen writing, and together we started enhancing and pull together the story while preserving the original vision and look from the original paintings.

And what a look this film was going to have! My concepts for the film meant a lot of difficulties. It soon turned out that this project would become huge! The project involves special effects, computer animation, green screens, and last but not least, a giant set piece.

After a series of technical tests, research and even a great deal of pioneering, we were finally ready for production. It turned out to be a huge budget for such a small film. The artistic value of the project and the line-up of a great and talented crew involved turned out to be quite convincing. We received financial support from Filmkraft Rogaland, Vestnorsk Filmsenter og Norsk Filminstitutt. The film has now a budget of over one million nok, and is being produced by Genesis Film and Vidvinkel Film. This is by far my biggest project, and I’ve learned so much from the process of being involved with just about everything during pre-production.

The film is being shot in a grandeur warehouse/office building in Haugesund, west coast of Norway. The building houses the living quarters for the film crew and the studio itself. Currently we live there as a great art collective building sets, eat good food and enjoying the most exciting and productive summer ever! I plan share some interesting and resourceful stories from the many challenges we met during our work with this film trough this blog.

Read more about the project at www.sortmelk.no (see also english version).
Follow production photos, behind the scenes and news trough Facebook.

Last year I made a couple of blanket sculptures in school based on some of my thoughts around biography. Through life we are covered in various blankets. From bright cuddly baby blankets to fashionable interior decorations – and in the end some old dusty rags.

The blankets are nested around each other like a spiral. Nesting the blankets gives a logical layered structure repeating itself as it grows – like an onion or the russian matryoshka dolls. The inner layers are rolled in soft baby blankets followed by a chronological order of later used rags.

The blanket rolls has a straight cut edge revealing all the different layers – just like growth rings of a tree. Not only by counting the number of growth rings can determine the age of a tree, but interpreting the spacing of growth rings can tell us much about it’s life.

In a way, the variation of qualities and appearances of the blankets can tell a story of a lived life. The size and width of the sculptures are therefore given a human size, so that the viewer can relate and activate the concept by being in the same room.

When I look back at these sculptures I find them very painterly, and I find likenesses in the colors and compositions from abstract painters like Wassily Kandinsky and Kenneth Noland

Another quality I noticed was the viewers’ desire to touch and cuddle the sculptures, most likely because of the great appeal warm and comfortable blankets have. I even had to wake up fellow students who took a nap on top of one of them

This is my pencil. It is sharp.

A rather occupational piece.. It occurred somewhere between preparing myself for drawing and actually drawing.

Actually I got the idea partly from people pointing me how sharp my pencil was (long tip). From there I just wanted to make an extreme version, just to see how far it can go…

This is actually a crucial piece for my current artist statement: My ideas spring from the possibilities in what I do, in which actions, thoughts and situations can be associated with something existential, philosophical or just some phenomena. Like in this example; how much can you sharpen a pencil before it turns out .. peculiar.

1. Framed photo of wall in corner.
2. Framed photo of a corner on wall.

A rather conceptual piece where I am exploring the borderline between image and installation. Is one more corner than the other?

NRK, the Norwegian government-owned radio and television company,  made a story about the comic community here in Oslo. Along with the comic strips I’ve been working on lately, I was attending the comic drawing sessions at Serieteket in Oslo. Excerpts from the montage can be translated into such as:

“… around the tables everything from computer nerds to art students show up to share and develop their ideas … ” I guess I was a good representative for both of the mentioned parties… This is what I had to say about the comics I am working on:

“I draw myself as the artist and art teacher in a couple of years from now. I see myself as a bitter art teacher who correcting little girls,  uhm.. I mean, young art students about how they keep on painting ONLY PRETTY THINGS! (…)”

See the whole clip at NRK’s websites here:

Two studies of a nude descending a staircase. Each descension took about 25-30 minutes.

No stop motion or editing, only speeded up.

It was a sequence study with a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s painting named “Nude descending a staircase”, which was an experiment combining italian futurism and a bit of the concepts of cubism.

Still sketch crawling every sunday. I just finished my old 200-page moleskine plain notebook with faces. I bought a new one – the more exclusive sketchbook edition.  The soft heavy paper on these books are just fantastic. The pencil gives a very responsive and dynamic line.

Here are some of my latest sketches from my brand new Moleskine “facebook”.

Being an art student often drives you into a critical approach in making Art. Sometimes making art can drive you into very restraining ideas about what is art and what is not. Usually these kinds of ideas can lead you into evil loops or just turn out pretty hilarious.

I thought the idea of drawing myself as the complex and self-proclaimed misunderstood genius-artist would make an interesting character.

Here with a loose reference to Marcel Duchamp and the paranoiac critical methods of Salvador Dali.

Follow upcoming pages where I disclose substance in art and how to paint real art from the unconscious!

If I was an autobiographic comic book character… Actually I have sketched out a couple of pages and some finished panels with this character. Stay tuned!!!

Ink brush pens

Just a quick post to show whats on my easel these days… I am painting with acrylics on a 100×80 cm canvas. Experimenting a bit with different glazing and wash techniques.