Liebster Award!

I totally forgot to mention that I was nominated for a Liebster Award. I also forgot to thank Miguel for such a nice recognition of my hard work and hours spent to make this blog as good as possible.

Miguel who has an excellent blog - http://storberose.blogspot.pt/- about literature in general and Portuguese Literature in English, nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award along with 4 other bloggers who have excellent and unusual blogs, but less than 200 readers/followers.

I was really happy with this recognition and although it is not a real award and it will change nothing in my life, it made my day. I don't post every day because I am busy with so many things and English is not my first or second or even third language. Therefore it costs me more time to write the post, but when I do it it is very often about totally new, marvellous artists (for most of you) or about unusual topics connected to surreal, magical and fantastic art.

Thank you Miguel!

I promise to write more. At the moment I have 5 really interesting posts to finish. One is about a, for the most of you unknown, Austrian-German painter from XX century, who had such an incredible talent and made most unusual, fantastic, magical etchings. His work will really surprise you.

Another is about one of the top contemporary surreal painters - Jaroslaw Kukowski.

Jaroslaw Kukowski - two of his famous paintings. 

Another two are about Siena, Sienese art and painters. Last June when in Siena I discovered a few surreal works made in XIII/XIV century. It totally blew me away.
The last post is about an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London - Poetry and Dream. The whole concept is a kind of nonsense, tightly stretched but nevertheless there are two De Chirico's there.

Now, I have to nominate five other blogs which, like mine, have less than 200 followers. And here the problems begin for me. I don't know enough blogs with excellent content with less than 200 followers. I can only think about one blog that I mention here below.
If you have any suggestion about interesting blogs about art, literature, politics, history, science or other issues, who have enriched the blogosphere and deserve more recognition, visits and linking, please let me know.

Here is the first blog:
http://econnexus.org/blog/  - A brilliant, excellently written blog that aims to enlighten people about "The Ecological/Economic Nexus"; what the Economist magazine calls "the challenges posed by the “three Fs”—food, fuel and the financial credit crunch" and to help provide solutions to those challenges. It also provide information on what we as individuals can do to help alleviate these problems.

"Dancing Queen" from the Blueberry Land

This happened on the sixth blueberry rainy day. Blueberryess was so fed up with the blueberryish rain, that she decided to do something very weird and totally unexpected. She wished to do something new, something that she had never done before. First she climbed her way up to the top of the Blueberry House of Surprise. The House was a museum and an archive where all the old rubbish from the blueberry kingdom was kept. You could come across items as common as old egg shells or stumble upon broken pieces of an ancient Berry Ming Dynasty vase. Nobody ever went in there except for the lonely Bleuchamp, the Artist, looking for inspiration for his next piece of never - finished art work.

 Blueberryess noticed a beautiful looking book. She got really interested in it, not just because of the way it looked but also because it was huge. It was a photo album of the Humans who ate Blueberries just like herself. It took her a lot of effort to open the giant book; the cover page was very heavy. When she finally managed to open it, she read, on the first page, the text “The most beautiful Gothic Cathedrals in the world” (Blueberress is a polyglot, she knows 121 different dialects). She started looking at the photos, the next Gothic Cathedral was more beautiful and more extraordinary then the last one. When she came to page 37, what she looked upon totally stunned her. It was a building so beautiful and so intricate in its construction that it looked unreal. It was the Cathedral in Siena, in Italy. Poor Blueberryess, for what she saw totally knocked her off her feet. She lay down on the Photo of the Cathedral, opened her eyes as wide as she could, and tried to suck the beauty of the Cathedral out of the photograph. After a while she closed her eyes and started sucking the sense of the Cathedral through her nose. Her dreams totally took control of her. But Blueberryess would not be Blueberryess if she did not start to turn her dreams into reality. She stood up, and then fell back. She was so totally committed to the idea that she had to find a way to get to see the Cathedral. She was in another state of mind. She did not watch her step and tripped on something rectangular. This rectangular thing had a window, and inside that a spool. As she kicked this thing with her leafy foot, the thing made a sound loud enough to make her fall backwards. She fell onto something soft. She looked at what it was that helped her break her fall. It was magic mushrooms. She was so hungry that she started eating them.

 The mushrooms, the music and the words that came out of the rectangular thing “...You can dance, Friday night and the lights are low, night is young and you are the dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen, dancing Queen........you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life and when you get the chance......dancing Queen… “ put her in the weirdest state.

She was still in this condition when Blueberryer found her. When he first came upon her he thought “Again, she has eaten those mushrooms”. He had stems hanging down on the ends of some beans in his hands. He did not have to think long about it; he wrapped one end of the stems around Blueberryess's hands and the other end around his own hand. He thought to himself. “Whatever happens, at least I have got her tied up and under my control”. And he did have her under control, but of course only physically. Her mind and soul where far away from anyone’s control, she was inaccessible. She was the Dancing Queen in the enchanted world of Sieneses golden Madonnas, angels, San Francesco and all her mystical and mesmerizing dreams.

Dancing Queen from the Blueberry Land Series by  Kasia  B.T. 

Dancing Queen - details 

                                         

Catch me if you can!

Catch me if you can - acrylics on canvas by Kasia B.Turajczyk

Once upon a time there was a forest, and some trees, and a bridge, and water, and a reflection in that water, i.e. an optical illusion.

A mysterious light, a surreal ambience, slightly unrealistic, a bit “horrorific” (sic!).

Then the eye was created. An All-Seeing and All-Knowing Eye. A Protecting Eye, a Reasoning Eye – but also a rebuking, twisted and unpredictable eye.

Then on the other side a planet was born. But is that a living planet? It is an unknowable fact. It is a big mystery. This planet is motionless. The far side is always dark and inaccessible.

Then in the end THEY came. What do they want? I will not be the one to betray their secret. If you want to know, go and talk to them, q.v.

They are still there, I checked again recently. They even tried to communicate with me. Unfortunately my currently very muddy brain couldn’t understand them. I blame the depression, the rain and fog.

I am not sure if you will be able to see them, it seems to me that they like to play ‘hide and seek’. They are not afraid of me, perhaps because I made them. Nonetheless they don’t want me to take liberties with them. I think they are right, by the way. I could asphyxiate them with my nihilism.

P.S. When you arrive at the car park of Lawrence Castle in the Haldon Forest Park do not follow the path of your scarcely sufficient imagination. Instead close your eyes and start using quantum entanglement to traverse the distance between you and them. Find the bridge and wait until the deepest mystery of THEIR being is revealed. Of course this will only be possible if you are honest, brave and beautiful (inside).

Hans Memling and his Last Judgment

I started this post last September in Gdansk and then I forgot about it. It ended as a draft. However I thought that you should know about that beautiful medieval altar triptych by Hans Memling which can be admired in a museum in Gdansk.

 Here is the old post, with some adjustments.

We are in Gdansk at the moment. Yesterday we went to the National Museum of Art in Gdansk to see the Last Judgment by Hans Memling. I couldn't take my eyes off this beautiful, fresh and colourful piece of fine art. It is a triptych, an altar. It is a very civilized image of heaven, purgatory and hell. The central panel shows Jesus sitting in Judgment on the world, while St Michael the Archangel is weighing souls and sending the damned to the Hell.

The triptych has an interesting past. It was commissioned by Angelo Tani, an agent of the Medici in Bruges. It was originally designed for the Florentine Church of Badia of Fiesole. During shipment to Italy the galleon San Matteo was captured by a privateer
(colloquialism for pirate), Paul Beneke from Gdansk in Poland (during the division of spoils) . The pirate ship’s owners donated the triptych to the St. Mary Church in Gdansk. A lengthy lawsuit against the Hanseatic League demanded its return to Italy, but without success. In the time of Napoleon’s supremacy the triptych was stolen again and went to the Louvre as spoils of war. After Napoleon was defeated it was removed to Berlin. In 1817 returned to Gdansk again. At the end of the Second World War Memling’s work was moved again, this time to the Reich (Germany), but not for long. The Red Army captured it and the triptych went to Leningrad to become a showpiece in the Hermitage. After Stalin’s death the Last Judgment returned to Gdansk. The original altar piece is now in the National Museum of Art. In St. Mary’s Church you can admire a copy.

So here we are between Hell , Purgatory and Heaven. The GREAT TRIO of Catholic dogmas.

Nota bene I don't believe in H.P.H.  I do believe that hell, purgatory and heaven is here and now. And H.P.H. are how you live your life.  

The whole triptych

St Michael the Archangel

A short note about Hans Memling. He was born in Hessen (Germany today) , went to Brussels and spent some time in the atelier of Rogier van der Weyden (who belongs to the school of Flemish primitives). Around 1465 he went to Bruges. From the 1460s until the end of his life he became one of the leading artists, painting both portraits and several large religious works, continuing the style he learned in his youth from his master. He worked in the tradition and style of the Flemish primitives.

The adventure with an Ocean Monster and a Blueberry Angel.

My third painting from the Blueberry-land Series.

Blueberryer and Blueberryess have found themselves in a tangled situation again.

Against all advice, Blueberryess jumped into the ocean because she wanted to know what she could find deep down in the black water. After that Blueberryer as a true gentlemen had no other option than to take a deep breath and jump into the ocean too. He did take the jump on his bike though. Of course he had a choice. To forget his Blueberryess and go for a wonderful bike ride in the “magnifique” Blueberry valley, sipping slowly the elegant Blueberry Cocktail at the top of the Blueberry Hill and enjoying the marvellous view over Blueberry Land. But as a victim of his own conception of his greatness, he had no other option than to jump into the black waters of that ocean. Or maybe it was true love?

This time only a miracle could help them. Blueberryess was swept swiftly into the Ocean Monster’s maw, and Bluberryer following her on his bike did almost the same. Suddenly out of the nothingness a Blueberry Angel appeared close to the monster. Would he be able to rescue the two reckless Blueberries?

Michael Sowa and his pigs.

Pork Soup by Michael Sowa 

One of my favourite imaginary, kind of surreal films is  Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s  Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. Widely knows as  Amélie. Above Amélie bed in her bedroom are hanging pictures/ prints of Michael Sowa. One of the pictures is "Fowl with Pearls" and another is 'Filmhoud".  Michael Sowa is a German surrealist illustrator and painters. He belongs to the most noted  illustrators in Germany. A wider public got aware of him through his illustrations for Axel Hacke’s publications. He used a pseudonym Heinz Obein.

In 1995 Michael Sowa was awarded with the Olaf-Gulbransson-Preis, in 2004 he received the Berlin Bookprice in the category Children’s Books for ‘Prinz Tamino’. Besides many book projects he works for newspapers such as Die Zeit and The New Yorker.

His work has been exhibited in the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum Hannover, in the Kunsthalle Oldenburg, at The Liebenweintrum in Burghausen and repetedly in Japan. In 2009 his 130 works were show in Japan, in Tokyo,   Kyoto and Yokohama.

His works/ imagination has something similar with René  Magritte's work. There is one fundamental difference between them, Sowa is a better painter (qua technique) than Magritte.  Magritte was more illustrator than painter. His paintings are really badly made from the point of view of an perfectionist- painter par excellent like me.

I have been trying to find some more personal/ biographical information about Michael Sowa but couldn't really find a lot about him. He was born in 1945 in Berlin, finished Art Pedagogic College. His name is a Polish one. Sowa means Owl in Polish.

There is a book available on Amazon entitled Sowa's Ark, with a collection of  over fifty farm animal-centric images.

A miniature pig splashes around in a bowl of soup; a duck leads a wheelbarrow down a lane; a woman gently strokes her daughter's face with a live rabbit in a dimly lit room. This work provides a journey into the imagination of artist Michael Sowa where a menagerie of bizarre animals take on complex personae. Using rich textures and inventive techniques of paint and varnish, these pictures achieve the otherworldly look of a surrealist fairy tale. -  From Amazon description 

His work is full of eccentric, humours, bizarre, fabulous stories most of them about animals. I love paintings which tell stories. His technique is 'magnifique'.

Here is the cover of his book from Amazon.



 I just order Sowa's Ark. Soon I will post more about him.

Below are some images of his paintings, which I really like.

School of Fish 

The Bear by Michael Sowa

Flying Pig by Michael Sowa

2012 Calendar - Betelgeuse and Mintaka

2012 Calendar

Betelgeuse and Mintaka Calendar