IMELDA ALMQVIST ART: JOURNEYS TO INNER WORLDS, OTHER WORLDS AND AROUND THE WORLD IN PAINTINGS

Psychopomp, helping spirit, the afterlife, the spirit world, new life form, journeys in painting, encounter with the white canvass, difference between painting and illustration, Art School, the Unconscious, the Rorschach Test, "Undertaking", "Daddy Is A Balloon", acrylic paint, oil paint, younger self, younger selves, about painting, shamanic practitioner, shamanic practitioner training

 

About Painting

ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

 

PSYCHOPOMP 2006

A Psychopomp is a helping spirit, often in animal form, who shows someone who has just died the way in the afterlife. A psychopomp accompanies the soul into either the 'beyond' or a new life form.

 

There are some questions people ask over and over...

• How do you make a painting?
• Where do you start?
• Where does the idea come from?
• Do you know at the start what the finished painting will look like?
• Why did you switch from oil paint to acrylic paint?

For me every painting is a journey. And therein lies the difference between a painting and an illustration. An illustration is a picture I put together in my mind and then execute on paper to every last detail. A painting is something else altogether. Painting is about 'an encounter with the white canvas', just as a writer confronts the white page (or rather 'blank computer screen' these days!)

The starting point can be anything at all: a word, a shape, an unusual colour combination, a random comment, a dream or vision, something I read. Even a smell that takes me right back to another time or another place.

 

 

For instance, seeing a group of trees like these

might translate itself into the background for a painting like this one:

ROMULUS AND REMUS 

(Twins Series)

 

As I start painting, I try to step back, both physically and mentally. To 'go with the flow', to 'not need to know' the end result. And I always get stuck. Sometimes only for a few hours, sometimes for months. And some paintings I simply don't "pull off" (though I often try again later). At Art School I was taught: if a painting isn't working, turn it upside down and try again! Crazy as this may sound, it is a useful idea. Painting over a rejected painting is a similar idea. It gives you something to work with. And here is where the unconscious comes in. When there is chaos on canvass, The Unconscious starts picking out shapes and bits worth keeping. (A bit like the Rorchach test, or finding shapes in cloud formations!) Once I get past the 'crisis' (the point of being stuck), the painting comes together and takes on an identity of its own. I finish it. This is when finding the right title becomes important. It 'stands on its own legs' and 'starts leading its own life' (this must be why artists refer to paintings as 'their babies').

 

THE ART OF FINDING THINGS YOU WEREN'T LOOKING FOR

Monoprints 2008

 

Absurd as it sounds, I don't always understand myself what a painting is about. Sometimes I know from the start, sometimes I only realise years later, looking at it again with fresh eyes.

After our son Brendan was born, I was a bit surprised: 3 boys! A close friend said to me: 'I am not surprised at all! In many of the paintings you did before you had children, there were babies. And all of them were boy babies! On some level you must have known that you were meant to have boys. I was speechless and utterly baffled. How could something I hadn't realised at all be so obvious to someone else?! (My mother recently made exactly the same comment on the phone).

 

UNDERTAKING  oilpainting made in 1994

The baby in this painting is a boy!

 

 

 

 

 

    DADDY IS A BALLOON!  oilpainting made in 1997

    Again, the baby in this painting is clearly a boy!

 

Another point I would like to make is that people tend to read paintings very literally. A baby is a baby. A boy is a boy, 'Boy With Baby'. But a baby or child can also stand for a younger self. For every grown-up that walks the earth, there are a 'baby and children of different ages' that disappeared, have 'gone into' someone being the person he or she is. It's something to bear in mind when looking at my paintings, particularly the earlier oil paintings.

In 'Undertaking' people assume that the boy is carrying a younger brother. I think he is ready to let go of a younger self. Both boys are the same person.

Talking about oil paintings, that is another question people ask: why acrylic paint? My true love is oil painting. However, once I was pregnant, I realised that it was not realistic to keep on using oil paint. Every layer takes about half a week to dry, so progress is slow. Oil paints are quite toxic too: as metal residues are used to achieve certain hues. Not to mention the turpentine fumes and so forth! In our house my studio happens to be on the same floor as the playroom and so it was time to change to non-toxic water-based paints.

The last thing I would like to say is that this statement refers only to my way of working, it is not meant to be a comment on the way other artists work.

 

 

Psychopomp, helping spirit, the afterlife, the spirit world, new life form, journeys in painting, encounter with the white canvass, difference between painting and illustration, Art School, the Unconscious, the Rorschach Test, "Undertaking", "Daddy Is A Balloon", acrylic paint, oil paint, younger self, younger selves, about painting, shamanic practitioner, shamanic practitioner training

IMELDA ALMQVIST ART: JOURNEYS TO INNER WORLDS, OTHER WORLDS AND AROUND THE WORLD IN PAINTINGS