261. Feet (Luna)

261. Luna (Feet), 2026, Öl auf Leinwand, 40 × 30cm, (Thomas Ansted)

This is another painting from the same pose as the others. I tried to paint all parts of the body. It was mostly completed during the first painting session in Rome, with only a little revision six months later in my studio.

Rarely do the first marks land in the right place but in this case many initial marks landed in an ok place. So, I felt like to continue painting risked replacing that imperfect freshness—thin, and accidental-looking—with something more labored.

‘What is this stuff you are making? Why are you painting things like this?’ I ask myself these questions all the time. Painting is internal dialogue, and even though it always feels like bad luck to interpret my own work, I can say that this kind of painting pushes sensation toward more interesting places for me, like playing music might be, I guess.

A representation can feel immediate, but it can also be a temporal knot, tying several events and sensations together. Duration matters here, rather than only the instantaneous image. The paintings I have seen in museums that have stayed with me do so because they multiply my senses. Not having seen those paintings would be like not having a language, although it is a visual language, and it can take me to renaissance Italy or Gutai action painting performance in 1950s Japan.

So there is a paradox here. A relatively direct approach can preserve freshness, while the larger aim is to come to grips with something that has concrete duration. The goal is not to make a superficial image for a quick glance. There are plenty of those already. Instead, the task is to make something that can sustain the gaze despite being built sometimes from glancing marks. So there has to be a direct freshness if possible but without ecstatic attention-seeking.