Soda Fever

I'm still waiting on the deck of 62 cards to be printed,  but that doesn't stop me from making more cards.
This one is inspired by my new passion for different flavours of sodas and juices. Since I am unable to eat, drinking unusual and familiar flavours has become very important. Some drinks bring me back to my past (such as root beer), while I discover other drinks, such as a German Peruvian Matte Ice tea with carbonation--very stimulating. I buy a lot of these at stores called Asia mat, which offer foods not usually sold in Norway.  Some Norwegian chain stores, too, offer a wide variety of drinks as well. Prices are high by  US standards, but I treat them as special things to be collected and savoured--much as this dream prospector must do, quenching his thirst in the desert.

Cover card

This is the cover image for the deck of 60 cards soon to be printed. At the bottom is the field for my signature and numbering of the limited edition.

Under the Pavilion

30x40, ink and water-colour, 2015

I have taken a break from the Tarot card project the last few days. I am getting a limited edition printed. The edition will feature 60 different cards.

In the mean time I have been enjoying some spring weather from our deck, where we recently set up a patio or pavilion tent. This is a view from it, looking at the back yards and river of Herre.

Glyph Party, Survivalist Hermit

Glyph Party is inspired by the glyphs of the ancient Maya, one of the most interesting pictographic languages. When looking at Mayan glyphs I am often struck by their immediacy; they sometimes seem contemporary, with a cartoony aesthetic. Other ancient hieroglyphs don't have this same feel--they are more stiff and formal. My rendition of glyphs celebrates a zany or informal feeling.

Survivalist Hermit is partially inspired by the classical Chinese genre of monk and hermit paintings. It is also a response to the rugged individualist notion that survivalists have about themselves. The card is tongue-in-cheek, mixing Buddhist otherworldliness with materialist paranoia.

Great Grandma, Sun Dial Room

Great Grandma is from an early 1940s photo shot probably in Gillette, Wyoming. To pose in front of the car was very common at the time--it seems that all my ancestors were doing it.

Sun Dial Room comes from the increasing importance that weather, the seasons, and especially the sun plays in my life. I am more or less confined to my house, so I am always positioning myself to absorb sun rays through windows.  This card is an architectural or engineering fantasy involving a piece of furniture turning into a mobile railroad car on a circular rail, a kind of clock.

Naked Granpa, Family Tree

Naked Granpa is painted from a small, off-center Polaroid taken in the early 1970s. My grandfather is bathing in a lake near Como Bluff, Wyoming, where the family would often camp in the summer. The scene is idyllic and nostalgic, showing a farmer's tan and a tenderness. This prairie lake was a very special spot, an oasis in the high desert. In the decades since, cattle ranching has fouled this lake, so it exists only in memory and art.

Family Tree is a fun fantasy about family lineage and the unpredictability of decedents. Family trees tend to be documents of reverence, so I enjoyed turning it into a comical scene.

Gear Head, Sea of Memory

Gear Head deals with my interest in gears as shapes, and as symbols. The gear head depicted here is strangely flexible, able to keep the machine going, regardless of gear size and axis.

Sea of Memory is about cultural icons and their transience. The sea coast often plays tricks on the mind, what with the weather and stone shapes, which coax the imagination to see faces and figures. In the foreground is a profile of JFK, mid ground Chaplin, background, the Sphinx. In the extreme foreground are poles from a vanished quay, a harbour that might be hard to dock at.