An Art Work A Day

I long for summer, sun and flowers so I had to create some of it on my own.

When lookin at these encaustic abstracts you need to both look close and then bend backwards and look at it from a longer distance and a different angle. A totally different image may appear. :-)

One of the issues that is debated much these days, at least here and I think also in the US is equal opportunety to marriage for same sex couples. I'll just add my abstract visual commentry on this issue.

Unfortunately most of us I think have a bad habit of not saying to ourselves how fair we are when looking in the mirror. Instead we talk ourselves down as one of the first things we do in the morning while brushing our teeth. I work very hard to avoid doing negative self talk like this but there seems to be an evil witch inside my head leading such bad words to my grumpy morning mouth. My dream is to wake up and say Jippii another day has started. LOL me being a B-person, that is probably a dream never coming completely true, but I can get closer. Life is way too short to give it less quality by starting every day with negative affirmations. Don't you agree?

Mirror Mirror on the Wall . . . ?,
subtitle: Mirror Mirror on the Wall, who is the fairest of the all? Not me that is for sure!

acrylics on canvas panel
18x24cm
$100

p&p worldwide is FREE

SOLD

Every single day I do my very best to fight my way upwards. I hope you do too. I try to pick up every scrap of positive thing I can find along my way - every small everyday joy. There simply is no other choice. But many days it is a fight - a hard one - fighting myself and my treacherous emotions and thoughts that do not do my bidding.

One of the things closely connected to feeling low is weight issues. Living in a society that prefer gazelles is not always easy.

When you feel like a whale it is no fun living a life as a land creature. Depression leads to inactivity and and urge for chocolade for those of us who do not stop eating alltogether when felling low of course. Inactivity leads to weight gain. Activity reduces depression. All this we know but the bad circle is very hard to break.

Some days I wish I was a sea creature because they look so graful and strong. Those days I find it sad that we do not have a swimming pool where I live. They have been talking about it for at least 40 years, but it has all been talk.


It is Good to be a Water Creature when Your Body is Heavy,
acrylics on canvas panel
18x24cm
SOLD

Finding the right path to follow is not always finding the wide motorway. Sometimes we have to dare enter narrow and scary places where we risk getting hurt.

In addition when we want to do the morally right things then too the path tend to become much narrower.

On bad days, our choices seem to us to be very few - we feel that our only option is following narrow paths because all other ways are locked either by ourselves or by others, maybe by financial or health issues and sometimes our own mind plays tricks on us and only shows us the narrow path.

Anyway, travelling those narrow path, no matter whether it is a temporary thing just to get out on the other side or what our life feels like, is a part of life where company is a very nice thing to have.

Finding the Narrow Path,

acrylics on canvas panel

18x24cm

$100

p&p worldwide is FREE

Some days we all feel like digging ourself a pit and hide. We gather up all the bad things we can find and nearly perversely enjoy how bad we feel and how horrible our life is and how terrible everyone is treating us. Of course most of us do not really enjoy it. All that is kind of a sad part of some phases of depression, and it is not easy to be optimistic when you seriously feel horrible.

Almost all the time when painting I have to make choices. How realistic should I paint? How many colours? How many details? What medium? What size? what subject? Theme? How to express what I want?

This is another one of my monochrome (only one colour and white/black) semiabstracts showing emotions. I have found that going further towards simplicity in colour, content nrush strokes etc etc often makes the emotion come out clearer. I do not want the viewer to see a lovely beautiful colourful fish swimming arond in a lovely underwater landscape. I want to show off the emotion of feeling alone and lonely. The saying made me chose a fish to show it. I hope you like it. I am quite happy with the choices and the effect those choices had.

That There Is Plenty of Fish in the Sea Does Not Help the Lonely Fish,

acrylics on canvas panel
18x24cm
$100

p&p worldwide is FREE

SOLD

You are probably fairly cold now so I'll add a warmer painting before I add the last cobold blue one.

Longing for Summer and Sun and Flowers,
acrylics on canvas panel
18x24cm
$100

p&p worldwide is FREE

Yesterday I bought a new cobolt blue acrylic paint and I had to test it out properly today. These blue paintings look quite good in broad silver frames.



Frozen Straws on Blue,
acrylics on canvas panel
18x24cm
$100



p&p worldwide is FREE




A special thank goes to Jennifer N (see her image) who gave me the inspiration even though her photo and my painting do not look the same at all, but that is what an artist does with his or her inspiration.

In January one of the painting that is marked with donated for equality now was sold. Here is the letter I got about that. I hope to be able to sell more for this fantastic organisation. I put all of the letter here except my postal address so that anyone of you who are more interested could get all this contact information.

EQUALITY NOW New York: 250 West 57 Street, #1527, New York, NY 10107, USA ▪ Tel:+1 212-586-0906 • Fax:+1 212-586-1611 • Email: info@equalitynow.org

London: 6 Buckingham Street, London WC2N 6BU, UK • Phone:+44 (0) 20-7839-5456 • Fax:+44 (0) 20-7839-4012 • Email: ukinfo@equalitynow.org

Nairobi: PO Box 2018 KNH 00202, Nairobi, Kenya • Tel: +254 20-2719-832 • Fax: +254 20-2719-868 • Email: equalitynow@kenyaweb.com

EQUALITY NOW WORKS FOR THE CIVIL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD February 21, 2008

Dear Ms. Vogsland:

Thank you so much for your contribution of $100.00 to Equality Now. With your help, we are making a real difference in advancing our common vision of a world in which girls and women live free from violence and discrimination.

In 2007 we launched two campaigns in support of women in Iran and Afghanistan, deepened our commitment to stop the global trade in human lives by launching the Fund for Grassroots Activism to End Sex Trafficking, and succeeded in getting a strong New York State law criminalizing human trafficking passed. In the coming year we will continue our work in these and other campaigns, including shutting down sex tour operator G & F Tours, working for the passage of a law in Mali against female genital mutilation, and demanding justice for the women who have been abducted and murdered in Mexico.

We could not pursue our global fight to end human rights abuses against women and girls without your continued generosity. Thank you for your support.
Best wishes,
Amanda Sullivan
Director, Women’s Action Network

This is one of the big ones I did earlier this month - 60x80cm.

I have had it on the wall for some time now and it keeps growing on me. I am both inspired by shapes in the macro and the microworld. You are free to interprete it as you like. To me it is both a flower and the big bang and the microscopic world.

Shapes of the Universe,

medium: acrylics on gallery wrapped canvas, painted on the sides and ready to hang

size: 60x80cm

$400 + postage which is approximately $45 within Europe and $60 for Norway - USA

SOLD

Today I took these encaustic works and ordered special mounts made. I will come back and show you them when they are done. I think I will then tryt o sell them at the Gautefall Central or on the spring exhibiton of the local guild. For that reason none of these will be available for sale unframed online. The top 3 are new ones. The last two are from earlier.

Visiting a Fantasy World - close up

My fantasy world has a visitor. I have made a close up of it so that you can see it. Insects has always been and probably will outlive us all and be parts of every world there is. One can not help but admire them.


Walking in the Mountains
7x9cm

In some parts of the world the trees has gone or it is too cold or too high up for them to grow. The plants on these mountains or plains are special and look fantastic in the autumn.







Welcome into My World
7x9cm

This one I have chosen to call "welcome into My World" because some days this is how I can visualize the insides of my way too active mind sometimes.


The Fox
7x9cm

He is male, he is the laid back, clever one from the fairly tales, he is the hunter. I think this image captures that very well and look forward to it getting a proper framing


Behind the Mask
7x9cm

Dynamic

A6 size - postcard size

In so many situations throughout history women have had to wait paitently. To be asked to dance, to avoid being left waiting "on the shelf", to be able to buy the neccessities for the family in the former East block countries, for their husbands, the hunters, the fishermen to come home, waiting in harems or other secluded womens parts of the house for the lord and master to clal them.. . . . Feel free to fill in more examples yourself.

25 years ago a grown lady I know asked a man "When will it ever be my turn?". The answer was "Your turn will never come. You must take it yourself".

I am happy as a mother of a daughter that times has changed - that the next generation of girls is not waiting for any Prince Charming or for someone to be kind enough to give them what they deserve. They go out and take it as their right. The girls in my class demands their rights and even though it makes my work harder, my soul rejoices becausae they are able to stand up for themselves.

I hope you like my interpretation of this subject. I did not want to make it horrible to wait so I also chose to use warm colours and hopefully also create an image of the solidarity between women.
As usual I do not want to show the figures in any detail simply because I want them to symbolise anyone of us, no matter what class or social standing or nationality or whatever.

Patiently Waiting In Line,
medium: acrylics on canvas panel
size: 18x24cm
$100

p&p with International Priority Mail is FREE

p&p worldwide with International Priority mail is FREE

This, like "Turbulence" is a large work painted in a "blurred" style (it is not the photo that is unlear) . I made it blurred or blended because that makes the eye react differently to it compared to crisp paintings. I hope to underline the message it conveys through this style.
I would very much appreciate comments on this use.

Disturbed Blue Planet,
oil on gallery wrapped canvas 60x80cm
$425

Postage will be equal to actual shipping - no additional fees, probably around $60 from Norway to USA, $45 from Norway to Europe.

Yesterday I spent most of the late day working on this experimental work. The shapes and movements are from sea life - sea urchins or similar creatues floating or swimming around. I needed soemthing that would work with blue since UV-light makes whites blue. This was not as easy as I thought. First of all I needed much more paint before it showed that I had thoughts so thatw ill have to be taken into account when planning my next uv-experiment.

Secondly, the room needed to be much darker than I had imagined for the effects to be good.

Last, but not least since I will be showing my work online too, getting great photos is difficult.

Anyway here is the painting in 4 versions; before uv- paint is applied, after uv - in daylight, in dark room two versions.
Abstract Sea urchin - trying out UV-paint,
50x60cm on gallery wrapped canvas, painted on the sides

I wonder what you will make of this dream landscape. Is this figure a mother to be, a child to be or what is going on? Why do this person dream this? I'd love to hear your interpretations in the comments.


Dream of Motherhood,
acrylics on canvas panel
24x30cm
$150
p&p worldwide is FREE

UV-paint in UV light ( also called black light)
First step in the process of painting "A Mum's Mightmare". I started by making this fantasy cloudy landscapy abstract background. Then I brought out the symbols, the close fisted hand and the curled up child or featus or maybe only a symbol for a human being in any age in a featal position?


This is how the painting looks under certaing UV light conditions. In other, the colours are not this intense blue.


At the moment I am considering making the UV version very dramatic and different by using reds and purples. I have not decided yet. You are most welcome to come back to see :-).