Saw this lady in Avignon today waiting for her coffee 🙂
Focus of Attention
I live in a village which functions for part of the year as a collection point for sheep. More than ten thousand sheep arrive at the place in great lorries. The lorries have several storeys so there can be quite a lot of sheep in them. The columns of lorries always arrive in the autumn after the sheep have been up in the mountains to graze. After arriving they are divided up into smaller flocks which go round the countryside, driven by a shepherd and 4-5 dogs, which are unbelievably good at defending their flock against attack from strange dogs, foxes and thieves. The dogs keep the flocks together, too.
Sheep are exposed to many dangers, animals of prey are not limited to one place. They are everywhere, disguised or not so disguised. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. You can recognise them by their instincts. by their ruthlessness. Here and now. By their mode of attack.
My own dog once ran off to chase sheep. It came home covered in blood to be met with a face expressing surprise and worry. I thought I knew the dog. But nature has its own cycle. Even though a dog can be calm and disciplined, a role model for other dogs, it has its aspects, just as other species have theirs. Its behaviour can seem unpredictable and intangible. My eyes seek out this focus when the schism between nature and culture has to stand its test.
A fugue for Several Voices
Painting with water colours is marvellous.
The secret to all water colour techniques is getting the colours to light up by allowing the paper to shine through them. If you mix white with water colours, the colours become ‘floury’. If you shut out the paper with a covering of paint, it is all over with the timbre of the colours.
Therefore I find it challenging to paint a tiger lying by a water hole. The animal makes a reflection of itself in the water – this element which is identical with the water colours I am using. I often use the water to allow the colours to flow over the paper and into each other in new combinations in an attempt to give the picture an impression of contrasts between hard and soft transitions.
A fugue for several voices.
My car still smells of pig…
Our village lies in an area where there are forests of evergreen oaks and box. They don’t grow very tall, 2-3 metres at most. The area is as big as Zealand, in Denmark, with small villages here and there. They are obviously quite isolated. In the area there are many wild boars, foxes, pheasants and birds of prey. Here they live safe and sound. It is easy to hide. There is peace and quiet.
Sometimes there are many hunters in the area. Especially the wild boars attract their interest. The locals say, “If you run over a wild boar, then it’s a problem, not for the boar but for the driver.”
I know this by bitter experience. My car still smells of pig.
One night I was driving through an isolated area to get home. Quietly and peacefully. But suddenly while I was driving I saw in the headlights that there was a flock of wild boar by the side of the road. At the same moment the great flock leader started to cross the road towards the car at an enormous speed. It all happened so fast that it was impossible to brake or avoid the impact. Then the unavoidable happened. I thundered into this belligerent monster. Its head with the small shining eyes and corner teeth are etched into my memory. But luckily I only hit its rear, which flew up over the radiator and down along the side of the car. The boar was so big that its back was higher than our radiator. The whole of the car’s radiator was crumpled up. Everything happened so suddenly as in an image which had passed the retina in a series of impressions without a conscious reference.
I was paralysed by the situation.
While the boar got up and ran into the forest with the rest of the family, I still sat behind the windscreen in my car with a fervent wish that I could paint myself out of this picture.
My palette
One of the most important things for my painting is the paint.
I make my own paints out of the purest pigments you can get, mixed with a medium on the basis of linseed oil, which has taken me years to develop and perfect. It is a family secret.
I take the classical colours as my starting point.
Cadmium lemon yellow
Cadmium medium yellow
Cadmium orange
Cadmium red
Madder Lake
Ultramarine blue
Cobalt blue
Chrome Oxide green
Natural ochre
Red ochre
Titan white
Ebony black
When one uses the classic colour pigments, each pigment has its own inherent potential or character. One can discover in the pigments the potentialities which suit one’s own temperament. The multiplicity is legion.
For example when one paints natural ochre into a white, a gold echo comes into being and an intimate sensuality, which can remind one of a tiger’s skin when the sun shines on it.
It is quite safe to say that most paint colours die a little when they are pre-mixed on the palette. The best thing to do is undoubtedly to mix them directly on the canvas.
Madness can be a wild tiger
Art is a form of madness because there are so many risks in connection with artistic observations. The transgressions of normal limits which every artistic process presupposes can be fateful.
The costs are great. Sometimes it is a matter of life or death.
An artist who outlives himself can control his madness. Controlled madness is the true badge of an artist.
Through controlled madness the artist reaches the targets he aspires to.
Madness can be a wild tiger which must not be killed. One must make do with identifying it, hunting it, forcing it up in to a corner and harnessing it to one’s feelings and imagination.
A wild tiger must be tamed.
The tamed tiger will lead the artist much further forward than any school, teacher, drug or religion will be able to.
But as with every source of strength and development, there is a risk in playing with one’s own savagery. Sometimes when the identification and the hunt go too fast, the process disintegrates and the tamed tiger turns on the artist with its atavistic savagery.
Dinner in Uzès
Last night we had dinner in Uzès, it was very nice evening, –look at the photo I took where we had our meal 🙂
What has a wild tiger got to do with Bach’s music?
Yellow tiger. 114×146 cm. 2012. www.uffechristoffersen.net
Today I am painting a large yellow tiger. The light is good so the brushes are flying. It may have something to do with the music I am listening to: Bach’s Suites for Cello, nos 1, 4 & 5 with Rostropovich. I think with the same strokes as he does when I paint my picture. Powerful and violent strokes. With thick gritty lines. It goes in time with the music. The rhythm keeps its own time. The sound is Bach at his best.
What does a tiger have to do with Bach’s music?
Bach is said to have had such a temperament, that people who knew him could relate how they could see a hungry tiger in his eyes when he was composing. A tiger that would break all bounds. It consumed everything it saw, heard and felt.
In the middle of all that music you could smell raw flesh.
New photo from my studio :-)
I just made a new photo for my homepage, from my atelier in Fontareches, France 🙂
Four big tiger paintings in progress.
From the studio. Four paintings in progress. www.uffechristoffersen.net
LEMON YELLOW TIGER. 195 x114 cm.
PURPLE TIGER. 195×114 cm.
YELLOW DEEP TIGER. 195×130 cm.
SCARLET RED. 195×130 cm.
www.uffechristoffersen.net You can see more paintings on my homepage 🙂
UFFE CHRISTOFFERSEN 
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