A fugue for Several Voices

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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 palette

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Fontareches. Uffe Stadil Christoffersen. 6-08-2012

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.

 www.uffechristoffersen.net

Madness can be a wild tiger

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Caput Mortuum Tiger. 100 x 65 cm. 2012.

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.

www.uffechristoffersen.net

Ambiguity…

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At the moment I am working on a tiger’s head. It snarls and spits at one. With its jaws open. It is making a signal.

It has its eyes closed.

But there is also a smile, even though it is ambiguous.

An ambiguity reflects the tiger’s character.

Once I was visited in my studio by one of my friends, a French psychiatrist. No just any psychiatrist. He is among other things a great admirer of Jean Dubuffet’s art. He looked at my animal pictures amicably. After a while he looked at me and said, “Uffe, you don’t paint animals at all. Has nobody ever told you that you have been painting human beings?”

Maybe he is right in that I search to find the balance between the presence and the absence of various characteristics.

What has a wild tiger got to do with Bach’s music?

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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 :-)

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I just made a new photo for my homepage, from my atelier in Fontareches, France 🙂

 

www.uffechristoffersen.net

Ochre

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Close to where I live there is an ochre pit which has been famous from olden times for its rich seams of ochre – a material whose use as a colour pigment goes right back to the Ice Age cave paintings in the south of France and north of Spain.

I am always inspired by ochre in my painting. The strong sunlight which falls on the yellow or reddish-yellow slopes makes them light up so one imagines that they consist of cadmium yellow or orange. The slopes make a vivid contrast to the cerulean blue of the sky. Dark green pine trees grow all over the ochre pits, and they are covered in a fine layer of ochre dust which is whirled up constantly by the wind, so that the natural colourings of the vegetation are almost lost.

But first and foremost it is the richness of nuances in the ochre material itself that makes such a strong impression. I have found at least 15 different yellow and red nuances.

One day I found a specially shining yellow colour and as there was enough of it, I decided to use it to plaster the walls of the house with.
I got hold of a shovel and drove my estate car into the ochre pits. Here I shoveled as much of the ochre as possible into the car and started the trip home. However I hadn’t got very far before the car gave out a scrunching noise and dropped down on its springs.
At my next trip to the mechanic I was told that the rear shock absorbers were completely shot – “You must have been carrying something very heavy,” he said.

In future I will only collect enough ochre for my painting.

 

Ochre tiger. 114 x 146 cm. 2012. www.uffechristoffersen.net

The Tiger as a Symbol

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The tiger is a fascinating creature.

In many cultures the tiger is a symbol of the warrior because it calls up an image of power and savagery.

It does not have the dignity of the lion, but is rather a perfidious despot who does not know mercy.

It is said that if you see a tiger in your dreams it means that you feel threatened by your own powerful animal instincts.

Sometimes you see the tiger fighting with animals from a lower class, for example with reptiles. In this case the tiger is the top ranking animal in one’s mind, in contrast to cases where it is fighting against an eagle or a lion. In the latter case it merely symbolises the angry instinct which seeks satisfaction in its fight against every superior prohibition. 

The meaning of the symbols is always different depending on the creatures in the respective conflict situations.

The tiger has a sly nature. It is not blind as is a bull’s nature. The tiger is more savage than the wild dog, even though the dog is just as badly adjusted as the tiger. 

The tiger’s instinct shows in its most aggressive form because the instincts go right back to the primeval forests. 

The tiger’s instincts symbolise extreme inhumanity.

The Tiger as a Symbol. 114 x 146 cm 2012. www.uffechristoffersen.net

 

PDF–Catalogue: Three tiger heads

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I have just made a PDF-catalogue with my three new big paintings.
I call it “THREE TIGERS HEADS” –or in danish– “Tre Tigerhoveder”.
It is about my latest paintings: About 200 x 200 cm.
With very strong colors, which express the tiger’s temperament 🙂

Tre tigerhoveder. Uffe Stadil Christoffersen 2012

www.uffechristoffersen.net