How Ideas Blossom

Hello, hello!

I was originally planning to blog every week, at least once per month, but here we are 6 weeks later after the last blog post. Whoops.
In my defense, things have been a little hectic lately. It seems like all the projects I start have some kind of inconvenient turn-out these days. I had issues with a press house, a gallery and sales have been generally a little slower.

But! I also had the most wonderful customers acquire my work, and this not only means the world to me, but it also means I can keep doing the weird colorful things I create.

On that topic, this painting is one of those lucky ones that found a new home super quickly! I have to give a special shout-out to Anna from Naughty Muse Studios in Busan, South Korea, without her and her friend, this painting would likely not been sold yet.
Honestly, my residency at Naughty Muse Studios was the highlight last year and it keeps on giving, as much in terms of inspiration but also kindness.

It is also during that residency that I got the idea of the painting I will be showing you today!
One fine day during the art residency, Anna took us on a trip to Ulsan, to see a few art shows, galleries and museums.
Ulsan is THE industrial city of South Korea, industries stretch over kilometers, filling your entire field of vision.
Immense metal structures that create a labyrinth of tubes that surround you, high towers that spit flames and fumes into the air.
It is magnificent in all the most terrible ways possible.

All artists in Anna’s car, me included, were taking pictures as she rode, taking as much in as possible.
I loved it so much, that I asked if we could go back, which Anna happily did.
On that second trip, we stopped here and there, so I could take better pictures of this sector. And it is during that second trip that I saw this:

I know, right??!!
Obviously this HAD to be painted and I took as many pictures as I could without breathing the air too much. (air pollution is very high near such industries)
I actually made a smaller painting from Ulsan’s industries when I was still in Busan, you can read more about the whole series here. The residency gave me time to paint more with oils and very bright underpaintings.

Anyway! I finished the art residency and still had a few days in Seoul, but that place in Ulsan was haunting me, so I did this quick sketch, trying to figure out a composition:

Of course, at the time I knew I had to wait until I got back home before starting on this.
Which I did. However, for reasons that I simply can’t recall, I decided to paint this in watercolors.
I had been wanting to paint it in oils since the beginning, so why watercolors? Beats me honestly. Maybe because I felt watercolors were easier for me (I was wrong, it was not easy to paint this!) and that I would be certain to make it.

Now in hindsight, I think it’s actually quite good that I painted this one in watercolors first, as it helped me visualize and make decisions before attacking the (for me) gigantic oil painting.
Here is the watercolor painting (which is available in the shop!)

It’s not a bad painting by any means, but not at all how I felt it. So I went back at it, but this time with oils!
It took me a while to complete, 6 or 7 months, as these bigger paintings need some time to figure out and it’s always a bit of side project for me. I still am mostly known for my sculptures, so I generally focus on sculptures work-wise and paintings feel always more like something I do for me.

Anyway!
Here the final oil painting!! It is 92 × 65 cm big. (so yeah feels huge to me!)
And I’m so happy with how it turned out!
There has been quite a lot of different layers for this one, the trees started green, but it all looked too realistic, so I had to switch the colors. I do like working like that though, making color mistakes and painting over, as I like to see the other layers underneath.
Same with the water which started very blue, but I decided to keep that blue when painting the little waves one by one.

I added herons and sea gulls in the sky, both very present in Busan / Ulsan. But also bigger insects on the two round industrial… things.
And there’s even some mysterious goo in the forest!

I hope you enjoyed the creative process of this painting!
I want to do another big oil painting, but I need to go back to smaller oil studies for now, to figure out what I want to do next!