27 juni 2013

Mamma Andersson

(bron en foto: Ulla Montan)

"Hi Christian,

It’s very late, as usual, as I sit down at my computer. Thank God no one else is here in my studio. It’s so easy to get stuck here and forget the time.

I think you have a much clearer head than I do. Every time I try to figure out what’s going on in my pictures, I get lost in strange sidetracks. That’s probably why I don’t actually understand how or why I paint. When I work, I try to have the confidence to follow an inner voice—to take away things that bother me, even if they are beautiful or technically good. I paint and repaint, and try to surprise myself without losing course, balancing with one foot in madness and the other in a sensible shoe. What upsets me most is when figures in the paintings sabotage the vibrations. Also when I work too long on the same painting, and the nitpicking gets me stuck.

I often use black spray paint as a sign of bad atmosphere or unspecified threat. In the paintings, time flows together. It is at the same moment both now and then and in the future. Even the subject can be both the observer and one of the elements in the picture at the same time. This is probably because when I’m working, I am everything and everyone at the same time, just as when I was a child playing by myself, I played the parts of all the dolls and their mothers at the same time. I find it easy to slip into other people’s identities. If someone tells a good story, I start fantasizing and find myself right in the middle of it. The same thing happens when I see a good movie: I believe I’m the main character until I find myself back out on the street again. Likewise, when a painting is done, I leave it, even emotionally. I find it difficult to recall what I thought then, at the time I was making a painting, if I think about it now.

My clearest thoughts are mostly around pure painterly formulations, for example, am I going to paint with a thick or thin transparent yellow, or yellow in combination with gray-lilac, or should I work with contours or use a black covering, and so on. My themes come and go, but I don’t believe I control them any more than a psychiatrist controls a patient.

When I start from a photograph, it’s usually the graphic qualities as compared to the atmosphere I feel I can read in the photograph I touch. I’m not sure other people can see what I see in a photograph, but I hope they see it in my finished painting.

Here I go: I’ve wandered onto a sidetrack, and I have no idea what I’m trying to explain. It’s just as sensitive as a turtle’s neck—he tries to protect it as well as he can, and if you try to pet him, he draws in his little head right away.

All the best,

Karin

P. S. On Saturday, snow fell in Stockholm. It’s wonderful, so crystal clear and beautiful, I hope the color stays for a while."
Deel van correspondentie tussen Christian Hawkey en Karin Mamma Andersson tussen 2006 en 2007, gepubliceerd in BOMB magazine 124. (bron: BOMBSITE)

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