254. Mango and cookies ice cream (Mango- und Cookies-Eis)

254. Mango and cookies ice cream (Mango- und Cookies-Eis), 2026, Öl auf Leinwand, 15 × 20cm, (Thomas Ansted)

This ice cream was the second last of them from the work I started for my exhibition that took place in September. I bit off more than I could chew. I love this ice cream bowl as an object. I borrowed it from a friend. It throws that strange turquoise color around the place. It was not too hard to mix. I was more dreading painting the mango-colored ice cream. Fortunately, that too came together pretty well. It is uplifting when the right color forms from the different blobs of paint from the tube. As usual, however, the best parts were the accidents.

A surfer chases a wave. An artist chases the investigation. Sure, we are in the moment of art as a soundbite, but pulling something apart and putting it back together again is the unique satisfaction of working in the studio. Unlike in engineering, in art the investigation continues and continues. Contemporary art more broadly is an investigation without a resolution. It explains the resistance within art to art’s own reification, it’s resistance to being summed up, summarized, turned into a soundbite.

The painting of a skirt that I did the other day is the only example that I can think of where the photograph of the painting looks better than the actual painting. Everything else I have photographed looks better in real life. You had to be there, as they say.

I remember visiting Hans Arkeveld in the Perth hills around 2003 and listening to him telling me how he was making artworks from the bones of birds, or visiting Mark Grey-Smith and listening to him tell me that when he did a Masters at the Slade you ‘had to go mad to succeed in the course!’. These were people who were investigating the world. Both came often from a simple almost mathematical concept: how does a circle become a square? How does that look? And so on.

Maybe it is like the game of football itself, as opposed to the brief report of the match that you hear later. Interest in art that is not derived from something else (a match report)—a thirst for something endless in its interpretability (the beautiful game)— is a feeling. I had a couple of groups through the studio yesterday. Great experience. It allowed some of the beautiful game to be explored first hand, even played, briefly.