I am happy to share that I am starting a collaboration with Spinderihallerne, an ex-factory for textile production, converted to a centre for art and innovation, located in Vejle, in South-East Jutland, close to Kolding where I will have my new office at The university of Southern Denmark. I will specifically work as a Guest Artist at their Fablab - Biotechlab, where the coordinator, the nice Shanice Otersen, is experimenting with creating materials out of fermentation of bacteria and algae. We have joined forces to create material for an exhibition, in particular naturalistic-botanical watercolor, using organic colors derived from plants and... food ;) Our color will include ink, that Shanice is synthetizing at the Biotechlab from among others: onions, turmeric roots, red cabbages, and beetroot. I am on the other side experimenting with instant coffee, curcuma and cochenille, which I got from a friend. Our art will focus on vegetable-organic life in flux, showing how different organisms from microorganism to macroscopic plants, animals and humans converge towards the same forms as they are affected by the same physical forces and the same biological cycle, determined by bio-chemical transformation, from generation, birth, growth, aging and death. We are all intertwined in the same life cycle, no matter the complexity of the organism and its original form as determined by its DNA. I painted the drawing shown at the top of this page with instant coffee socked in little water, I have represented three different beings: a chlorella cell whose spots resemble the human face we all see in the moon, a lilac blossoms and fetus. All sharing circular forms with spots, wrinkles or bents, showing faces and mouths. In the above paintings, I have experimented with the different colors made by Shanice at the Biotech lab. The subject I have used as test, is a withering tulip petal, which has a interesting form, the anther originates from the petal and seems to resemble a match, but also the body of a swan with a black head. I imagined a swan's song, which I have re-painted with curcuma and coffee. Our art will embody a circularity as we will paint organic life with organic inks. The technical challenges are many. First of all in my paintings I would like to keep a watercolour botanical quality, which means: sensitive shading and details, using water to dilute the ink to get light tints, and a certain degree of precision, trying to work with wet-on-wet and dry-on-wet techniques. Moreover, organic colors might rotten or fade, so I have tried to fix the color with Arabic gum, trying to avoid to dilute the color too much. In the next painting, I have painted the stem of a withering lupine utilizing coffee, curcuma and red cabbage from the Biotechlab. I wanted to capture how the withering stem resembled a spine ending in a reptilian, dragon-like, scaled head. In the following one, I have made a trial with coffee and cochenille, from my friend Sara and it gave a quite interesting effect, as the cochenille give a delicate purple, but when we add more the delicate tint fades into grey-light black and with coffee it gives wonderful warm shadow effects. The above paintings represent a moss clod, that I have removed to clean up the tiles in the garden ;)
The top one is painted with coffee, while the others with regular watercolors. I tried to capture the multilayered structure of this tiny moss, looking at the single globular parts as if they were heads of Martian-beings standing on a hunchbacked stem. So, these are initial trials but after summer holidays, I will work further at creating organic subjects with organic colors, mixing with gum and other mordents, trying to prevent the paintings from fading too much. But after all, fading is like withering, and probably my paint will slowly wither as the subjects they represent, microorganisms and plants as made of living flesh. Have a nice summer and thank you for stopping by xxx Bertie
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AuthorFreelance illustrator and painter. Archives
May 2023
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