255. Chocolate chip, mango and vanilla icecream in a wafer bowl on black mirror (Schokoladenstückchen, Mango- und Vanilleeis in einer Waffelschale auf schwarzem Spiegel)

255. Chocolate chip, mango and vanilla icecream in a wafer bowl on black mirror (Schokoladenstückchen, Mango- und Vanilleeis in einer Waffelschale auf schwarzem Spiegel), 2026, Öl auf Leinwand, 15 × 20cm, (Thomas Ansted)

This was the very last ice cream painting that I started last year. Making the bowl myself seemed to be an important thing to test. I made this waffle bowl together with my mother-in-law. I then took it to the ice cream parlour and ordered as usual. My ice cream guy proposed the chocolate chip. I agreed. It drew the form into the boat that it wanted to be. I then rushed to photograph the ice cream before it melted. Painting this edible wafer bowl was harder than painting the ordinary waffles that I had painted in the past. Parts of it were even transparent. It is not intended to be photo-realistic but it should have the feel of a wafer bowl made of caramelised sugar. I am convinced that I should never become a pastry chef after the whole exercise.

I am always expecting the painting, if not to work, then to be work. It is not work like the analysis of a spread sheet of numbers. It is work like the making of jam or sausages by my old Croatian nextdoor neighbour in Melbourne. It is what a person does with the hands and with resources to craft something into existence and give away. It’s not ‘only jam’ nor ‘only sausages’ of course. It is something that you don’t have to explain. It is in the sensations. It is the jam and sausages of friendship, kinship.

People are attracted to different experiences. Some like high octane hotted up cars burning rubber and some like discovering new varieties of orchids. As for me, I enjoy looking at good paintings. I like when the paint is luminous and viscous like resin, and when it is crumbly like a vintage cheddar. Van Eyck’s annunciation is a painting. However, I find myself asking if ‘annunciation’ was an experience for van Eyck. Maybe it was just in a dream. Imagine he just finds himself in the midst of this moment one night, when celestial light explodes into a chamber and beings of light flash into a mortal realm. Maybe possessed by this vision for a couple of years he grinds on and on toward some kind of approximate representation. The painting has the feel of that kind of conviction, that this is something that van Eyck actually saw. Dreams can be extremely intoxicating. Those wrinkles in the fabric x-ray both its time and all time. Does that come from a man so disinterested in his work that to him painting is like selling cheap souvenirs from a blanket on the cobblestones.

I think the main question turning around in my head these days is: ‘how do aesthetics of pursuits differ from the pursuit of aesthetics?’

As a teenager. I missed the opportunity to meet an artist who would become one of my favourite artists. By complete coincidence she was my friend’s grandmother. However, she died before I was even aware of this connection. After that, I always took the opportunity to meet the artists and curators and art historians that I liked, when possible. They have however been mixed experiences. However, I can count one or two good friends to have come out of the experience.

Sometimes they are attracted to the same things. Indeed

Tastes sometimes change day to day or minute to minute. Someone who collected orchids probably has a whole other world of sensations in their life.