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Work in progress - 90 x 120 cm, oil on canvas

I can’t say definitely that I’m there yet. As I sit on my comfy studio sofa (many thanks Lia!), I contemplate the day’s work. There is something starting to take shape, a tantalising more complete definition. Extend this here, darken that there, bring this colour in there and viola, there is the final painting. Ah, but some hours, perhaps days or even a week or two to go yet.

“When do I know when a painting is finished?”, I’ve often been asked. It might seem like a silly question, but often the way I work, there is no preliminary sketch or reference materials that I’m working from. It all comes out of my imagination and what is already there on the canvas waiting to be discovered. It is certainly not a new way to work. Even many non artists have laid on the grass and gazed at the clouds in the sky and imagined animals, faces or whatever. As a boy, I used to do it a lot with friends. We all took delight in trying to identify the visual fantasy of the other. It was sometimes very surprising how differently some one else saw the same thing. I still take pleasure in this when people discover something in my own work that I haven’t seen.

Artistically, I’m not alone in this method of visual inspiration.  Everybody is familiar with the results of Dalí’s paranoic critical method, whereby one thing becomes another if you look at it in a different way. Even Leonardo Da Vinci was fond of the day dreamer’s gaze, or the thousand mile stare.

“It is in my opinion not useless if you pause in the realisation of pictorial forms and look at the spots on the wall, at the ashes of the hearth, at the clouds, or in the gutter: on careful observation, you will make wonderful discoveries there, which the genius of the painter can turn to good account in the composition of human and animal battles, landscapes, monsters, devils and other fantastic things which you can use to your advantage. These confused things awaken the genius to new inventions, although one must have learnt well how to do all the parts, especially the limbs of the animals and the forms of the landscape, its plants, and its stones.”
From Leonardo Da Vinci’s treatise on painting.

So here I am staring at my painting, filling in the gaps, or rather, it is filling in the gaps for me. But then I come back to myself, sitting on the couch, taking a deep breath I quit my repose and walk to the palette and brushes. Now its time to fill the gaps with a brush and paint.

The exhibiting artists

Seeing a brilliant opportunity, at very short notice, Amanda Sage organised an exhibition of Fantastic Visionary artists at Galerie 10. She and Laurence Caruana, along with Andrew Gonzalez had been giving a painting seminar in the Summer. A number of artists had travelled to attend their course in Italy. Thus she came to the idea of organising a show while everybody was in Europe.

After a late night skype session between Amanda, Dennis Konstantin and myself, Dennis made himself busy with the flyer and Amanda busy organising the other artists, which is often compared to herding cats.

Dennis drove down from Hamburg in his spacious blue VW van. A vehicle well kitted out for adventures, so it fitted our needs very well. After stopping over for the night in Berlin, we loaded my artwork into the van and began our long road trip to Vienna.

René and Lisa graciously housed us in their living room for our stay in Vienna. So I must thank them again for their hospitality.

On Tuesday we made trip out to one of Dennis’ collectors, who endless numbers of Fuchs prints and sculptures and now had a growing collection of Dennis’ artwork.

After too many coffees and a light lunch, we trooped over to Amanda’s studio to catch up David Heskin and Aloria Weaver who were staying with Amanda. It is a pleasure to meet the real face behind an internet presence, and more so with David and Aloria. Both had been on Amanda and Laurence Caruana’s painting seminar idyllically located in a medieval village in the Italian hills. They were now making the most of Amanda’s studio in Vienna to finish of some works for our group exhibition “The Irresistible Flow of Time” at Galerie 10.

Wednesday brought Emma Watkinson to Vienna and us to Galerie 10 to hang our artwork. Not all of the exhibiting artists were present and there was much to do. Although we started early in the afternoon, we worked into the night to complete the hanging of 69 artworks in total, making at a very large show. And by the time the hanging was completed, it looked amazing. It was such a wonderful collection of high quality artwork.

Our work was done, so we adjourned to Amanda’s studio again, taking Galerie 10 owner, Michael Scheer along with us. It was again a long night as artists are wont to do, however, we could sleep in for our big day, the opening of the exhibition.

When I arrived, the gallery was wall to wall with people. The opening also brought all of the local Fantastic Painters, and then others from far away elsewhere who just happened to be in town.  Many of these faces I met for the first time outside of the internet. Its reassuring to get to know the real people of these ever present internet avatars.

Two of the other exhibiting artists managed to make time from their busy schedules back home and fly into Vienna for the exhibition, Daniel Mirante and Basia Wiacek.

De Es Schwertberger did all of us younger artists the honour of exhibiting with us and bridging the worlds of the established Fantastic Realists to that of the emerging, oft referred to as, Visionary artists. However, the term Visionary is still up for debate.

We the exhibiting artists were of course very busy the whole evening talking to various people about our art, and of course catching up with and meeting the other artists. Not surprisingly, it ended up being a very late night.

And similarly unsurprising, was a few of the taught faces present the very next morning for breakfast at De Es‘ studio. In De Es‘ expansive inner city studio, we took advantage of the far more relaxed atmosphere and conversed at leisurely pace. Sadly however, this gathering of new and old friends had to eventually part ways, as flights were waiting to whisk people off to new adventures.

As for Dennis and myself, our next adventure was to commence the following day when we returned North to Germany and headed to the Bavarian Forest to visit the opening of  the 1st Biennial of Fantastic Art in the Town of Viechtach. But this is the next news entry.

Following are all of the wonderful artists that I exhibited with.

De Es Schwertberger (A), Amanda Sage (USA), Dennis Konstantin (D), Leo Plaw (D), David Heskin (USA), Aloria Weaver (USA), Adam Scott Miller (USA), Gregory Pettit (USA), Autumn Sky Morrison (USA), Daniel Mirante (GB), Basia Wiacek (GB), Emma Watkinson (GB)

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The Irresistible Flow of Time – Galerie 10

Today Dennis Konstantin, Karl Perrson and I drove all the way from Berlin to Vienna. Dennis and I are exhibiting with a selection of 11 artists from the Fantastic Art movement, this September in Austria at Galerie 10.

It is already half a century ago that Galerie 10 began to represent the art of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism, including also its extensions into the following “new waves”.

The current exhibition of 11 artists, who consider themselves to be part of the worldwide movement of a new wave of Visionary Art, proves that the flow of visionary energy through the Viennese Masters Minds, continues to express itself on a global scale with overwhelming vitality.

Exhibiting artists: De Es Schwertberger (A), Amanda Sage (USA), Dennis Konstantin (D), Leo Plaw (D), David Heskin (USA), Adam Scott Miller (USA), Gregory Pettit (USA), Autumn Sky Morrison (USA), Daniel Mirante (GB), Gasia Wiacek (GB)

Galerie 10

3rd Floor
Getreidemarkt 10
1010 Wien, Austria
www.galerie10.at

Opening: 9th September 2010, 7pm
Closing: 11th October 2010
Opening hours: Mon +Fri, 10 – 6pm

Last week I made my way to Hamburg to have a number of my paintings scanned and spend some time with friend and colleague in artistic crimes, Dennis Konstantin. Dennis uses a company called Scan Discounter to have his paintings scanned at full size in 300 DPI. The same company also does excellent paper and canvas prints from these scans.

Earlier that week I managed to persuade Norman Dziegel, the proud owner of my Gelbe Spiral painting to loan it to me, so I could take it to Hamburg for scanning. I packaged it up for the journey along with two other paintings. Meeting up with Dennis we drove out to Scan Discounter. Hidden on the ground floor of a house in the suburbs is the largest scanner I’ve ever seen. They tell me that they can scan up to 2 and half meters in length at 300 DPI. That makes for very large files, and you’d better have enough RAM on your computer to open and modify them. (drooling while dreaming…)

With the scans done in no time, we were off to Dennis’ apartment in the Caroline Quarter of Hamburg, the not so famous sister of the Schanzen Quater. Both are like a mini versions of Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Neukölln in Berlin. But it wasn’t the distractions of Hamburg street life that interested us. There was painting to be done!

Dennis and I have on a number of occasions have had joint painting sessions, over the internet. While it is interesting to have a bit of virtual company, to share the same space is far more productive. I am always curious to look over other’s shoulders and to see how they work. Its a great chance to trade tips on technique and talk paint.

Along with my paintings that I’d brought to Hamburg to scan, were two small collaboration pieces that we had started on, last January when Dennis was in Berlin for our Fantastic Visions exhibition. We set about finishing the two off. However, Dennis is much quicker than I and finished his, while I have not yet. I’ve included some photos below.

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Sinneswandeln - black light mini-golf

On a very hot Friday evening I made my way over to the Görlitzer Park in Kreuzberg. There in the only remaining buildings from the former railway station was the new cafe Isa Mitz opening. In the basement for the past three months a collection of UV artists from the Sinneswandeln project have been busy building a black light mini-golf course.

Ellen Harting headed up the project to organise painters and sculptors create 5 unique themed rooms. Ellen herself also provide a number of sculptures and installations, some also being internally lit with changing colours. One of the artists she brought in to the project was my friend Micha Colory Krebs.

I was called in on the opening night to make a photo documentation of their hard work. I had visited the worksite a number of times before, but on the opening night with all of the tools and materials cleared away and the UV lights turned on it looked very impressive. It looks like they might already have another project waiting for them.

After departing with Anja Brinkmann and stopping off for a cooling icecream, we paid a visit to Strychnin Gallery‘s latest exhibition opening “FutureScapes” featuring the artists, Michael Page, Sri Whipple, Jason Wheatley and Damon Soule. After a run of shows that didn’t interest me, Strychnin finally had some great paintings to satisfy my eye with great technique and attention to detail. Of most interest to me were the organic like collaboration pieces. While there Yasha Young had a chat to me about the many things she and the gallery are involved in. I don’t know if she ever takes a rest.

We also caught up with Wolfgang Reimers at “FutureScapes” and then later rediscovered we all our favourite vegi-burger shop in Berlin to round the evening out.

But that wasn’t to be the end of my evening, I then went on to meet up with digital artist Héctor Pineda from Mexico. But I’ll tell you more about him in my next article.