222. Anna with balloons
222. Anna with balloons, 2025, oil on linen, 40 x 30cm, (Darryn Ansted)
‘The world extended its hand and I took it.’ That is a sentence from the fifth volume of Karl-Ove Knausgaard’s autobiography. It struck a chord with me because that is partly what I am doing in my painting practice. This particular painting is an example of that philosophy.
It is much harder than it sounds. I am not painting things that are just enjoyable to look at. If I did that then I would probably paint a glass of wine and a juicy steak, as well as my kids. That would be indulgent and appear random and without deeper meaning. Instead, I am bringing something from a lived situation into the world of painting in order that it might be transformed.
About 60 years ago Andy Warhol dismissed Dada art because it did not transform its subject. Specifically, when talking about the readymades of Rauschenberg, he said that just taking an object and placing it in a gallery ‘failed to transform it’. Indeed, that was what the artists of Dada and neo-Dada wanted. The thing was already made, already art, and all that was left was for such an object merely to be ‘framed’ by the artist and by extension the gallery. Warhol’s Pop art is not something that I look at much but I acknowledge that it achieves its goal of transforming its subject. For those interested, Benjamin Buchloh has referred to Gerhard Richter’s artworks as ‘painted readymades’. Also in that case, the readymade does not transform, and therefore can admit no vulnerability.
Attempting to transform something through artwork means being vulnerable rather than indifferent to human frailty. I get a sense of transformation in Knausgaard’s book. It is a giant autobiography that goes into intricate details about his childhood, adolescence and later life. I have had a wide range of responses to different parts of it. Some parts have been great, and other parts have even made me feel squeamish. I laughed out loud at some passages and other passages were unbearable to listen to (he had a violent father and perhaps that is why the book is called ‘my struggle’). His huge autobiography is a 6000-page journey that is seriously rich in ordinary details, to the point that it transforms his experiences into an artwork.
I don’t feel like I can judge my paintings clearly until a couple of years have passed and the creative act is well out of my consciousness. However, I can enjoy some small details from time to time in the studio. Maybe it is something like the details I enjoy in Knausgaard. There is nothing inherently special about transforming a situation into artwork, selecting which details remain and which are subordinated. It is just a simple activity that gains significance sometimes not even because of the artist but because the world rips away so violently in the opposite direction like a wild bull. Either you stopped and painted something, or you didn’t. With today’s bucking of technology that allows a computer to make any conceivable picture for anyone, my attempts to paint the situations I live day-to-day already feels like an untimely meditation. Seeing a friend walking past with an armful of balloons on a sunny afternoon, the eye takes on board enough. There are enough details to make the experience rich despite its ordinary, everyday nature, and perhaps even because of its ordinary nature. I like to look at Egyptian hieroglyphs for the same reason, not because they are inherently beautiful but because the world has torn off so wildly far away from ancient Egypt and its scribes, with their small graphic approximations of people also passing by, in profile, with their possessions.
I extend my hand and the world takes it.
