The sailing boats.

 

You may be wondering why and how the heck did I make that leap from tons of portraits to painting sailing boast and why?

Hahah. Well to somone who knows me, its makes perfect sense. To somone looking form afar- it makes no sense at all, possibley.

The first time i stepped on to a sailing boat, it was love at first sight, I was 20, and I was debating giving up St. Martins art college and becoming a skipper- or marrying a sailor.

Some year later, after living in Rome, a life full of adrenalin in art, art parties and travel, I came to a cross roads with the optiones to go to a New York art residency or to a Robinson Crusoe type island residency in the Adriatic Sea.

Well I thoguht the island will be a than or never opportunity, when will I be mad enough to go to a almost deserted island , again.. So I packed me off to the island named Palmižana. There all my gadgets died. Phone, camera, computer, it all died reapitedley until I had no contact with the exterior world.

All I could do on that island was paint, swim and eat. I eneded up destroying most of my clothes with the paint, and I pretty much become the wild thing, one becomes on a wild island. I painted topless in the heat of the summer, half covered in thick oil paints all over my body , looking like some tribal woman with tribal markings. I could only get the paints off when I would visit the mailand and get a hot waxing removing, hair, paint and sand stuck to my skin.

Being stuck on a tiny island in a painting ,eating swimming, routine in the sun, makes you become like all robinsons, greedey for any boats and any changes. I like all natives of my island would see arriving sailing boats and stare at the new arrivals as if they where alians , and soon started leaving Palmizana with any boat that would take me sailing as if they where saving me form enprisonement. I'd see a boat, sail off the island in my swim suit, and than have to find a ferry back some days later.

There was a lack of adrenalin which I love and connect and need in art making on that island. In need of adrenalin that same summer I started surfing and became a windsurf journalist, following the regattas around the coast. And as winter hit- I wanted to get our of the water and started to learn to sail on boats.

The next spring having seen the most beautiful boat of my life- the Shipman carbon yacht at Split on the Boat show- I came up to the sales director an procured a job- at the factory of the Shipman Yachts in Slovenia- just becosue I love sailing boats so much, no other reason. I was in love with that boat.

So Sailing boats for me are this constant attraction, love, which I somehow ignored in my art making for all these years, as that love for the boat was private, and art is something that ultimatley is an expression that ends up wievewd by the public.

This show “ All the sister want to kiss sailors” is a fragile dare to paint this beautiful thing, the sailing yacht, which I expirence as being so gorgous, perhaps I have been frightened of painting them badley in the past so did not dare. But I feel that the paintings I have produced are not so bad, the more I paint the less stiff my boats become.

And as for tha sea and sky- well I cant fake it at all, I must paint those whilst at the sea, looking at the waters and heavens, and in this instance with the watercolor pigments I use sea water to move the colors , I dip the paper into the water, the wind lifts my papars and changes the color flows. But also I makes such a mess at sea I am free to splat and shake and dont have the constraints of the studio. Only in this way do I manage to catch the colors and movements of the nature which than are a decent stage for the boats.

Any way , I fear this has been a can of worms, opened, with my painting thise series of sailing boats- I have suddnely ignored all my portrait projets and put them on hold, completley engulfed in this boat painting, sea going, wind swpt hair, drinking the grappa, whilst hnging out with fishermen and painting at their dock thing.

Oh yeah.