Lepopisana

I remember my grandparents' house like a sepia coloured photograph. The time of the summers we spent there stayed with me like memories of a child and later a teenager, even though I visited the house many times later, when times changed. I still observe those memories through the warm yellow summer air when everybody prayed for rain that wouldn't come and when the warm wind carried dust among tall acacias. Then the house was full of people. I remember it's cool rooms with rows and rows of books: Plato, Hegel, Spinoza, math textbooks, Dostoevsky. Years ago my mum brought Dostoevsky home for me, but others are still pretty much there. There were two book cases full of bottles of juice and jars of marmalade my grandma made. The house stands on the main street, facing away from it. I remember one afternoon when my mother put me to bed and I didn't sleep because I would jump out of bed and run to the window every time I heard a horse drawn cart out in the street. E...

There's a poem I like to read every now and again. It's called A Passer-by and a Poplar. It was written by a Serbian poet Vasko Popa in 1981. I don't know if it's translated into English, I couldn't find it on the net. The poem is about a row of poplars on a city road which is about to be widened, so the poplars have to go. They are cut down by bulldozers, all except one. That one decided not to cooperate, it wouldn't let the bulldozer kill it without fighting first. People have gathered to watch. One of them, an elderly gentleman, removes his hat to the tree, he raises his umberlla, shouting: "Don't give up, my soul!"  I painted a series of paintings with this poem in my mind, four to be precise. They didn't turn out the way they should, so I stopped. Now, two years after, I decided they will have to go. They silently await execution, all three of them except the last one. It wouldn't let me discard it without a fight first....

There's a fantasy I invented to scare myself when I was a kid. Every night when I went to bed, just before I fell asleep, I thought about waking up in another time and place. What if I wake up somewhere else, in another time? Would I be able to come back? It was never really a question because it never happened, but what if ... The Greatcoat isn't exactly that, but it is a story where past meets present.  Isabel is a young doctor's wife, living in new surroundings, in a rented apartment she doesn't like. On the first floor lives the landlady Isabel resents. She thinks people are whispering behind her back every time she goes to the shops. Isabel isn't much of a housewife, she's not used to the life she found herself in. Philip, her husband is either in surgery or visiting patients, so she spends much of her time alone. She's dissatisfied, lonely and always cold. At night she listens to the landlady walking to the window and back for hours. One evening ...

Brown Paper Sketchbook I remember standing in an art supply shop admiring sketchbooks and loose drawing paper. I took an A5 wire bound Kraft Hahnemühle sketchbook, fascinated by its brown cover and brown paper. It looked like a basic, no nonsense notebook. I thought it would be nice to use it for chalk of crayon sketching. Brown paper would be perfect for a white crayon. I bought it, but a white crayon never touched those brown pages. It doesn't matter, the paper doesn't have enough tooth anyway. Looking back, I don't know what got into me to make me so fascinated by brown paper. It's not practical. All the same, I decided to use it, to fill it up no matter what. Days are getting longer. I was doodling the other day and new ideas started to immerge. The future looks good.   Haruki Murakami I love reading on a bus. Even when I don't get a seat, it doesn't matter, I can read standing up. Every now and again I get a strange look from a fellow pas...

I was fifteen when I first read Romeo and Juliet. I remember liking the story, however I can't remember if I thought it was romantic. A lot of people seem to think it is and I don't really know why. What does the story have to contain, to be considered romantic?  In my opinion Romeo and Juliet is a story about two confused teenagers who can't communicate properly and their haste brings them to their downfall. They both have dreams about future events, sort of premonitions, but they don't listen to them, let alone act upon them. At the beginning of the story Romeo is in love with Rosaline. He talks a lot about it with his friends. It's like listening to a modern teenager: "She doesn't want me, what am I to do?" His friends convince him to go to a party and meet her there. But instead of Rosaline, Romeo meets Juliet and one look at her is enough for him to immortally fall in love. I know I'm being cynical, but it is immortal, isn't it. A...

There's a chocolate shop in Dortmund, Pott au Chocolat, we went to a couple of years ago when we were visiting friends. They've got all sorts of chocolates and pralines, so we decided to buy some to take them to work when we return. Well, in the end we decided against it and ate the chocolates ourselves. I still remember them being very very good. What got me thinking about these chocolates was a painting hanging in the shop. It was a big canvass in landscape format. The colours the artist used were light pink, beige and brown. It looked like a sort of sweet praline filling, loosely mixed, milk chocolate with vanilla and a hint of rose water. There were chunks of something in the paint, which could easily be almonds in a praline.  I noticed the painting mainly because I painted a series of five paintings in similar colours at the time. The overlapping letters are a poem nobody can read, not even myself, once I painted the letters. But I know it's there. There's ...

It's snowing. The snowflakes look heavy. I know they won't last. I've been thinking about spring lately and a cool blue colour, almost turquoise comes to mind quite often. It's funny, how I seem to see it everywhere: in a cover of a book I just read or on one I am going to read in near future. I remember the ice cream which became popular years ago, when I was still at school. It was called Blue Summer Sky, it was cold blue and had almost no taste, apart from something synthetic. All the same, the colour was beautiful. I like using this cold blue, almost turquoise in my paintings when I want to emphasise the cold of an arctic landscape, composed of overlapping texts no one can read anymore. Or was it the coldness of estranged people speaking to no one. On Saturday we went to a shop we haven't been to for quite a long time. I don't remember it's name, but it's a kind of shop that sells household items and we needed a new gasket for an old Italian c...