An Art Work A Day

Here is another on of my paintings which comment on sociopolitical issues. Unfortunately way too many women in the world are for all practical purposes gagged and can not safely speak up for themselves or their loved ones or be politically active.

Should this painting sell, then the whole amount will be sent to Equality Now a fantastic organization working for women's right around the globe.

Gagged,
acrylics on paper
24x32cm
$100

p&p worldwide is FREE

Today I got an email telling me that a wonderful old lady I knew had "chosen a rational death at her own hand" because she was afraid of losing her ability to live alone due to multiple serious health issues that she so bravely had handled for such a long time.

It is horrible that we in our socalled sivilized world do not offer a safe feeling to our elderly and sick people so that they can be certain of getting good care should they need it, no matter financies or what.

Although the subject matter is a verys erious one that I care very much about, the painting style itself was one of playing with the materials and the medium.

Even though things has changed for women dramatically over the last 50 years, still most women in the world are in big trouble if they should happen to be unfortunate to become married to a man who uses his fits on his wife.

Only yesterday I talked to a ladyfriend of mine who is married to a nice man about women's situations around the world and through history. One of the topics was stay at home mums or wives. They lose pension points for one things and only this summer I talked to a young mum who told me that still she got the "only at home" comment. That mum was in her early thirties when she started having her children and her husband and she had decided that she should not work for some years because they valued the time together with their small children that much.

One ladyfriend who recently formally became a pensioner told me the same as my mother-in-law did - how lovely it was to get that money in every month with their own names on, no matter how nice husbands they had.

I had a lovely thing happen in one of my last English classes. We were talking about when to use prensent tens -s/-es and dis some exercises. They were to explain WHY they chose so or so. In one of the examples we had a subject with some kind of leadingjob and the boy explaining naturally explained that the verb had to have the -s because that subject could be exchanged for he or she. Ten years a got that subject would have been explained by it could have been a he. Things are going in the right direction.

Still though, equality has a problem when it comes to physical strength and tendency for violence.

Trapped by the Fisted Ring
- from the Made Just For Fun-series,
acrylics on paper
27x35cm
$100

p&p worldwide is FREE

Well, today is the third day of the August challenge

Tribute To a Beautiful Earth
Celebrating and Conserving Our Planet with DailyPainters.com

and I have chosen this abstract where I tried to say something about how the unborn are totally dependent on how we take care of this wonderful planet that we live on. This abstract figure has aspects of the tadpole, the fish as well as a women trying to show that all species' unborn matter.

I painted this one as a contrast to "Pink Beast". It is not meant to be a certain species and to be frank I kind of see it sometimes as a bird and sometimes as a prehistoric species. As usual it is the feeling or emotion and expression that matters the most to me and I therefore prefer my subjects to be non-realistic and non-species specific. For the same reason most of my figures have only indicated some facial expressions because I do not want to show a specific human being but more a specific human emotion or experience. I like body language because it is so expressive. I hope to continue to develope using this kind of ways to express things. That leads me into studying cartooning as well as oriental art because both use non photorealistic ways of expression. I hope you enjoy those works of mine.


Young and Vulnerable,
acrylics on canvas panel
18x24cm
$100
p&p worldwide is FREE

Olala,
acrylics on acrylics paper
7x10cm
nfs at the moment



I am experimenting a bit these days with making the mounting and things like that be part of the expression. Here is one of the ideas I am playing with - using mounts in different ways.

My daughter's comment on seeing this painting was that she would like me to make a series using the topic "blind". Maybe I will if my muse will allow me. Keep visiting my blog or DPgallery and you will get to know.

Today I have spent most time washing and putting out poison to try to get those ants that keep eating on our holiday house. Hopefully there is nobody else eating besides the mice that I saw feces after and the ants that I saw running around. I will travel up there in a few days again and see whether the problem has improved.

Today's painting is another of my social commentary ones.


Blindfolded by Fashion,
acrylics on acrylics paper
30x41cm
$100

p&p worldwide is FREE

My family and I have an old house which we use kind of like a cabin. Unfortunately something has gnaved on wood under the panelling and I do not know what it is. My fingers are crossed that it is only mice and not any of the bad wood eating insects.

A friend commented on yesterday's painting and said she saw something quite different than what I saw. After that I too see it with new eyes and considered changing the name of it to the more neutral "sitting" which will also give the viewer more freedom to interpret it themselves.

Reclining,
acrylics on canvas panel
18x24cm
$100
p&p worldwide is FREE

Hurrayyy my holiday has started. No need to say more, is there?

If you click the image then you will get a large version and can see the details better


The Past, the Future and the Ancestors,
acrylics on gallery wrapped canvas
60x70cm
$275
p&p must be agreed on. I will make it as cheap as safety will allow due to size.

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

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

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 :-).

As you can see from the photo of it on the wall, the colour tends a tad towards the more pink/crimson red than the red red. I will try to get a new photo in daylight tomorrow.

I was so happy this morning because finally I could see the sun and finally it happened when I was home so that I oculd get a few proper photos of my art.




















In the Corner,
medium: oil on canvas
size: 18x24cm
I was unsure a long time whether I wanted to sell or not but ended up selling after a year. This one I would have liked to be one of the paintings representing me if I should be interviewed again or have something written about me in a book. THAT is how satisfied I am with it.

This time I managed to rip myself away by steely will power and take photos along the way. LOL. You might notice a difference in colour on the examples. Neither is correct. the original has the crimson red of step two but the brightness of those that looks more orange. The original has NO orange tint. Problem is that I either have to use the flash and then I get that yellowish orange tint or not use flash and lose the brightness of the painting. I will try again tomorrow in natural light. Unfortunately due to rain as well as it being winter proper daylight has been hard to find.

Step 1
For this painting I did not want the white canvas as the base to paint on These kinds of artist canvas panel boards are primed with acrylics before you buy them - sometimes twice or three times. That means that me using acrylics for another layer before starting with the oils works fine.

Usually I make it all black - several layers, but sometimes I thin the black out and use it for first sketches to get an idea of the composition. here as you can see the idea is for a corner of a room with an abstract person sitting in the "shame on you"-corner like they used to have in old schools and in old ways of child rearing.

I also indicated some the corner itself and some texture to the walls and the floor. Whether that would be the end texture or shape of the figure, that is not decided at this point.

Neither is the style completely decided. I might at this stage go for a more realistic figure and focus on right porportions and similar and make it fairly realistic. Then I would be left with choices as to how detailed to paint the face and what clothes and all such things.

The next challenge was what colours to go for. If I wanted the realistic look, then the walls and the floor had to be realistic too and if I wanted to continue the texture of wall and floor wooden paneles like the ones you find in houses from around 1950 then I would have to chose wooden colours.

Step 2
In the end I decided to go for more symbolic than realistic style and focus on the emotion of shame and feeling exposed and humiliated and alone.

So what colour symbolises that? Of course red is the colour of such feelings. We get warm and we turn red in the face and on the ears.

I therefore covered the entire painting with alizarin crimson red after a thin layer of painting medium.


Step 3
I then started working on the background and began with the walls. Most people nowadays and especially not teachers do not use this method any more even though some might use other means to humiliate their students.

Anyway, this being from the "old days" I wanted to make the background like any very basic schoolhouse in the country in the old days. That is untreated or painted wooden panels. Most of my house which is from the 1950s is made by using this narrow wooden panels.

The way I wanted to create this effect was to focus on painting with a narrow brush downwards over and over and the last layer one downward stroke at a time - each stroke covering partly the previous one. That way I indicated that structure. Again if I had chosen the realistic painting style I would then have had to show the twirls and holes and all which makes such panel looking great when unpainted. But again the walls is not the focus - they are only supporting the symbolism.


Step 4
Same stage in two photos one taken with flash so that you can see the details better. Then of course you get the reflections. Wet paint is hard to take photos of, especially when there is dark parts too.

The floor was decided on in very much the same manner as the walls. Normally such panels would have been paralell to either wall but my focus is the corner so I chose to make them diagonal and kind of point towards the corner.

Step 5
Painting the figure itself. I am now firmly decided on making this painting symbolic but still at this stage I could have changed my mind and done the figure more realistic. I am very happy I made the choices I made because This is EXACTLY how I would have wanted it to turn out. Now I really got the pay for practising chinese brush painting where every brush stroke counts and can not be erased. One bad stroke and I would have had to scrape of and wipe off and start all over again. I felt great when I saw the result.

Final Step
Now I had the biggest challenge of all LOL How much "piddling in my puddle" as an artist friend calls it would I do. The time had come to fix the tiny details. The problem is that a tiny tad too much piddling and the painting is overworked and loses its freshness and is basically nearly ruined if you're unlucky. One of my weaknesses is my need to just fix a tiny bit more and a tiny bit more. Today or rather tonight :-) (03.46 here) I forced myself not to do that.

The final decition is where to put signature, how big and what colour to use. You want it to show clearly but also not to interfear with the painting etc etc. What is left now is to put it somewhere safe from 3 cats fighting and similar while it dries.

Again two versions here to allow you to see the prosess better.

Waiting and Hoping,
oil on canvas panel
size: 18x24cm
SOLD


All income from the sale of this painting will go directly to Equality Now
One thing I feel very strongly about is women's rights around the globe and as some of you have noticed that shines through some of my works. I was fortunate to be born in what UN has said is the best country to be born in. But Still most of my life has been influenced by traditional female limitations. Getting divorced and raising two children took almost all energhy for about 15 years. Loose Pelvis Syndrom did not help either.

I am lucky, most women do not have my advantages. Who you get married to matters enourmously and divorce is usually not an option. I chose to dress this waiting girlwoman in red because that is the traditional bridal colour in many Asian countries. Traditional marriages is not uncommonly arranged marriages too in many parts of the world and also in the West due to immigration. What are the feelings of these girls being put up on those pidestalls for the weeding days? What do they hope for - what are their dreams?

Please check out Equality Now which is a wonderful women's organisation which works much in the same way as Amnersty International