other people's work - part 92 - rudi hurzlmeier

I've been an admirer ever since I first ran across the work of German artist Rudi Hurzlmeier at least ten years ago when I found his Krahe (Crow) picture on a greeting card at Powell's in Portland and immediately went in search of more images. Even though he's both extremely prolific and very well known in Europe there's almost no information about him in English. The wiki page (after translation) says this:

After the demolition of his school career, he worked as a gas station attendant, among other things, male model, parachute Artist, autopsy assistant, Hotelbuskoch, tilers, gigolo, set designers and antique dealers.

Not much to go on but mostly enough. He maintains a fine balance between an almost classical western painting style and a somewhat twisted but mostly sweet sense of humor. Here are a few favorites - including the original Krahe, who you probably recognized.

If you don't mind I'll grumble a bit in between examples of his wonderfully wry artwork.

It's finally summer after a long winter and almost non-existent spring but we have to keep the windows and curtains closed all day because the workmen still arrive early every morning.

We knew they were going to replace the windows but didn't know they'd be removing and replacing all the bricks first.

The sound of multiple mortar saws is not conducive to my own artistic endeavors, but I can try to imagine being half as funny as Rudi Hurzlmeier when I look at his pictures instead.

Even though the windows are closed, dust clouds the rooms. No matter how much I vacuum, dust, sweep and wash, I'm sure this cave is much tidier. I've pretty much given up til they've gone for good.

I had to seal up my paints because brick dust gets into everything.

Just when we think they must be almost done, that there couldn't possibly be more bricks to remove and replace, they fool us by coming back down to grind out even more mortar.

I wouldn't mind so much but for the fact it's been going on for a month already and so far there's been no sign of any new windows. Goodness knows how long that will take. If I'm not going to howl, I may as well enjoy the dance.

If anyone wants to come and visit I tell them to look for us inside the densest cloud of dust in the city.

There's not much more I can say about Rudi Hurzlmeier's work that it doesn't say for itself. I hope you've liked it too. At least we can always walk along the beach and one of these fine days I may be able to return to those drawings that are currently under wraps.

♡

other people's work part 33

There are many artists whose work I admire but a few days ago I came across some images painted by a young, self taught, Dutch painter named Thijme Termaat that quite blew me away. Not only are they exquisitely crafted but what's so striking to me is their inherently positive vision of life. You can read an interview with the artist as well as see larger versions of paintings shown in the video by going here. He's a pretty fascinating young man.

Thijme made this video over the course of three years (yes, one year per minute) using simple, stop-motion and time-lapse techniques and no digital effects. What he did do was to always wear the same shirt in order to not distract the viewer from the paintings but if you look closely, you'll notice his steadily growing hair is suddenly tied in a knot. Watching it full screen is even more of a treat.



Hmmm. He also seems able to paint using both hands.
♡

calling Qatar

Now you may be wondering why my artwork hasn't been jumping off the virtual shelves over at my 'Etsy' shop and to tell the truth so have I. Okay, so you might not know I have a shop at that huge marketplace but I've kept it pretty quiet since reopening the spot a few months ago after a 2 year absence. I don't expect my blog friends to be ready to purchase some of the work I've done these past few years because you provide more than enough happiness for me when you tell me you like the pieces I've shown here. Anyway, I've been selected to be in a large number of circles, favorite lists, and a few treasury lists too but although Etsy sellers may appreciate one another not many have the funds for buying art.

It would be nice to be appreciated at a financial level by those who can afford to collect art and just this morning I discovered that the oil rich nation Qatar is in the market for contemporary work in a big way. Just as some of America's wealthy industrialists built up great collections of art in the 19th century now countries in the Middle East are doing much the same thing. Nobody really knows why and, considering the general Islamic proscription on figurative art, I have to think they are buying as many examples of modern Western art as they can simply because they can. Rothko, deKooning, Lichtenstein, Koons, and Warhol aren't well known as figurative artists anyway but their paintings have been sold recently for up to $73 million dollars each. I mean, what are billionaires supposed to do with all that money once they've stolen it? Invest, of course. The collections now moving to the Middle East and further east once belonged in private collections belonging to former wealthy American industrialists. There have also been rumors that museums have been selling works from public collections.

Anyway, I need to find a way to let those rich sheikhs and sheikhas know about my Etsy shop. Once they've bought a couple of pieces from me they can always go and have a look at some of the shops in my 'favorites' collection. That way everybody gets to make a little money and know their work is being appreciated by a sophisticated international audience. It's not like the artists they're collecting now are around anymore to accept the kudos.

I may have to raise my prices.

♡

it's the end of the 'world'

as we know it,
and I feel fine.
REM

No, I don't mean the end of the larger one we all inhabit but I must admit it did make me smile a few weeks ago when I read that the 'World Islands' in Dubai are showing signs of erosion and deterioration and are gradually falling back into the sea. The islands, 70% of which have been sold at enormous prices as the ultimate in luxury retreats, were created from dredged sand which is now dissolving back to whence it came. It's depressing to understand just how much of the real world's resources are being wasted to prop up the vanity of the super-rich so I take comfort where I can and this was a good one.

On the other hand, there are continuing developments in applied sciences that could make the world a better place and begin healing some of the damage that's already been done. One particular example was unveiled this week in Boston where artificial trees made of recycled plastic from drink bottles won the SHIFTboston urban intervention contest. We all agree trees are wonderful but it's not possible to grow enough of them in our cities to clean the air. The TREEPOD systems are capable of removing carbon dioxide from the air and releasing oxygen. Their design is based not just on regular trees but on the human lung. The giant white, translucent trees can be installed among existing trees or on their own and at night they can light up in a bright array of colors. Anything that can help solve two essential problems at once that's also beautiful gets my vote.

One of my favorite artists in the world today is Andy Goldsworthy who works entirely with the materials nature supplies. He once said, "I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way":




Me too ♡

you call this winter?

Although you might be thinking this is what it looks like outside our January window the fact is this isn't a great photograph of a snowy Canadian landscape, in fact, it's no photograph at all. Instead, it's a pencil drawing done by a Russian artist whose work I found completely by accident and whose name I don't know because the web page is almost all in Cyrillic. If you click on the link you have to scroll down to see the other drawings but I promise it will be worth a little of your time.

So far winter here has been surprisingly mild. It's snowed a couple of times but just prettily and none has stayed but there are still months to go and the parking bans that went into effect in December don't end until the last day of March. I mentioned to someone today that I was going to miss seeing crocuses and snowdrops in February and he asked what they are. I'm hoping he's one of those people who don't pay attention to flowers rather than that early spring flowers don't grow here at all. Time will tell.

I'm still drawing and thinking of a story I'd like to write to go along with the pictures. Sometimes I can't fall asleep because images and colors race through my mind. Does anything like that ever happen to you?

℃

x-rayted image

Before the year gets too old I had to show you this image from a calendar produced last year for deserving clients in the medical industry by a German company called Eizo. I'm pretty sure they aren't real x-rays but the images are pretty memorable.

Of course, it could just be a government plot to encourage cultural acceptance of full-body scanners at airports. Have you noticed nobody's talking about that in the news anymore?

:-)

what are words worth?

This is about some books I can't find. I think I had them here in Portland and if so, I must have loaned them to someone who forgot to return them or, knowing me, I probably gave them away. Italo Calvino's 'Cosmicomics' and 't-zero' would make perfect gifts for anyone who loves to read. In less than a paragraph, he can convey the vastness of the universe; in less than a chapter, he can describe the beauty of primeval Earth. It's amazing.

While looking for a place to buy the complete collection (both books plus some stories not published before) I found some paintings by Yan Nascimbene who began illustrating Italo Calvino's work a few years ago. They're beautiful paintings and this one certainly hints at Calvino's magic but I rather hope he doesn't attempt to illustrate my two favorites. These tales are best read and internalized in the old fashioned way. Visual media, even paintings by masters, can't compete with nuanced depths of well written prose or poetry.

Qfwfq is the narrator of 'Cosmicomics' and although it's hard to say simply who or what Qfwfq is, the truth is it doesn't matter because even though the stories are surreal they are quite ordinary events - except that they happen in quite un-ordinary contexts. Qfwfq may be understood as a sort of embodiment of life spirit, a being who has existed - along with family and friends - since the dawn of time.

In the beginning, before the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe was concentrated in a single point. Qfwfq can tell you about it: He was there.

"Naturally, we were all there—where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time, either: What use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?"

All at One Point, in which people are "packed in like sardines," along with their furniture, their laundry, "all the material that was to serve afterwards to form the universe." They are stuck there until one of them, Mrs. Ph(i)nk0, exclaims, "Oh, if I only had some room, how I'd like to make some tagliatelle for you boys!" At that moment, Qfwfq and the others begin to picture "the space that her round arms would occupy," the space for the dough, the flour, the wheat for the flour, the sun on the wheat, the galaxy to harbor the sun . .

Calvino succeeds in making the unimaginable accessible to us, so that we can begin, at least mentally, to take leaps that span light-years.

"And at the bottom of each of those eyes I lived, or rather another me lived, one of the images of me, and it encountered the image of her...in that beyond which opens, past the semiliquid sphere of the irises, in the darkness of the pupils, the mirrored hall of the retinas, in our true element which extends without shores, without boundaries."

While looking for excerpts to share I also came across his description of the time when the moon and earth were much, much closer than they are today. It's not a description you'd find in any astronomy text but his version is definitely a lot more fun to read:

At one time, according to Sir George H. Darwin, the Moon was very close to the Earth. Then the tides gradually pushed her far away: the tides that the Moon herself causes in the Earth's waters, where the Earth slowly loses energy.

How well I know!--old Qfwfq cried--the rest of you can't remember, but I can. We had her on top of us all the time, that enormous Moon: when she was full--nights as bright as day, but with a butter-colored light--it looked as if she were going to crush us; when she was new, she rolled around the sky like a black umbrella blown by the wind; and when she was waxing, she came forward with her horns so low she seemed about to stick into the peak of a promontory and get caught there. But the whole business of the Moon's phases worked in a different way then: because the distances from the Sun were different, and the orbits, and the angles of something or other, I forget what; as for eclipses, with the Earth and Moon stuck together the way they were, why, we had eclipses every minute: naturally, those two big monsters managed to put each other in the shade constantly, first one, then the other.

Orbit? Oh, elliptical, of course: for a while it would huddle against us and then it would take flight for a while. The tides, when the Moon swung closer, rose so high nobody could hold them back. There were nights when the Moon was full and very, very low, and the tide was so high that the Moon missed a ducking in the sea by a hair's-breadth; well, let's say a few yards anyway. Climb up on the Moon? Of course we did. All you had to do was row out to it in a boat and, when you were underneath, prop a ladder against her and scramble up.

In these stories linked together to describe the beginnings of everything and the end of some things human emotion is the one constant. In the Cosmicomics we discover jealousy, irritation, pride, generosity, and love. The most beautiful of all the stories may be that one quoted at the start, "In the act of making pasta, the universe can be imagined." In that moment of generosity, imagination, and love, Calvino says, our world and all of us were born.

♡

just passing through

I haven't been able to decide where I'm going with this one but here it is anyway. I don't know if something like it will get painted but the sheer silliness appealed to me on this last weekend of January. Are they passing a line of snarled traffic? Is it day? night? winter? summer? desert? beach? Does anyone remember the pogo stick? Nasty things designed for ridding the world of children as I remember.

Sometimes the simplest things can be the most difficult. Is it Spring yet?

Space mandala

You think that I know what I do; that I belong to myself for one or even half a breath? As little as a feather knows what it writes; as little as a ball can guess where it flies.
Rumi

Hummingbird mandala

The beauty of a thing lies in the fact that the possible perfection, corresponding to its inner nature, emerges.
Al Ghazali

Heart mandala

Every time when a light rises from you a light comes down toward you.
Kubra

Tiger Stop

Last of the lady and big cat images.. the road has ended and there's a hole in the floor. Painting the borders has become more entertaining so we'll have to see -

what's next?

Tiger Walk

A tiny world where the old tiger's walking. When this one was painted I was wearying of the symbols.

Once there were dragons.

Tiger Tale

You can look in a pool and see the moon reflected but it's not the moon.

The lady is blind and needs a guide.

Garden Cats

I've often thought about a world at a slight remove from this one so there was more than one series of painted ladies with non-domesticated pets.

It wasn't until recently that I tried digital photography. I'll be happy never to scan the 35mm slides of long ago so don't worry.