What they say?
by Tom Jørgensen
Tom Jørgensen, art critique at Jyllands-Posten (a Danish newspaper), and editor of Kunstavisen (the most influential art magazine in Denmark), has written the following:
“Ole Skovsmose is married to Miriam from Brazil, and he loves her. Why now this private information? Yes, because these images are obviously painted by a man who is in love.
Portraits of people are based on observations. The artist studies his model in depth, makes sketches, uses photographs, and observes how the personality of the portrayed becomes revealed through a particular movement of the mouth or a glimpse of the eye.
However, such are Ole Skovsmose’s pictures not. Although they are based on a particular face, they are first of all free associations. One has to imagine how a man in love knows the loved one so well that every detail in her face is carefully preserved in his memory: the ridge of the nose, the deep cavities of the eyelids, the soft ripples of the mouth, the white plain of the plague and the small fine markings where a wrinkle shoots forward.
The associations of a landscape are not random, because that’s what these paintings look like. Landscapes with baskets, rivers, hills, rivers and small groves. This also says something about how to categorize these pictures. Instead of creating naturalistic portraits, as we know them from for instance. a Thomas Kluge, Ole Skovsmose’s spontaneous, intuitive and expressive drawing line up with fast uninterrupted movements.
The same can be said about the color used here to express feelings and moods. A color that reflects Ole’s exchange between living in Brazil and Denmark. We recognise our country’s beautifully subdued dances, and we are overwhelmed by Brazil’s tropically red, orange, blue and green colours. The contradictions between cool, controlled and well-considered Denmark and the spontaneous, joyful and surplus-hit Brazil go up in a beautiful synthesis.
And then there is the crush. The images are embedded in warm and newly discovered forces. All the people on these paintings smile. Not only the beloved Miriam, whom we now almost feel, we know personally, but all. And if it’s not necessarily the mouth that smiles, then the eyes will make it. Not a smile that’s spoken like when we put each other up to holiday pictures on Facebook, but the smile we smile when we do not think about it. When we’re just happy. Everyday Happy. And in love.
That’s why they seem contagious, Ole Skovsmose’s pictures. We look and feel how they perceived how they are sensed. And how the spontaneous contours go up to a higher level with the mood-creating color areas. It’s alive, it’s beautiful and it warms a thoughtful Nordic soul. It’s just before you fall in love.”
In the book 101 Kunstnere (Forlaget JA) edited by Tom Jørgensen one can read:
“Ole Skovsmose’s paintings balance sublimely between hesitation and ecstatic release. They are at once exalted, delicate, and vibrant. They are about perceiving. Ole Skovsmose tries to convey the experience of perceiving something for the very first time… With Ole Skovsmose we engage with an artist who combines a completely open-minded and pristine approach to the creative process with a fierce passion and life-affirming curiosity about seeing, learning, and recognition.” (My translation)
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