About

Julie Damgaard  interviewing Lise Blomberg

With the help of crosscut between dream and reality L.B. evokes an emblematic romantic nature scenery, by which the apparent lightness covers different psychologically complicated situations.

For a long time you have been working with collage technique. How come?

I think about the idea, that you should be able to see the construction of the piece. In the work with the collage technique a crosscut, as known from the film media, is taking place. As a spectator you might consider if the kiss you see on the canvas has taken place, is taking place in this moment or belongs to the future. Maybe it is just a daydream. I’m interested in this ambiguity of the story. 

Do you pick up a lot of inspiration from the film media?

Yes, sometimes. But it’s important to keep in mind that painting has a character of it’s own. With the figurative, narrative painting a clear paradox arises, because a painting does not contain a progression, instead you can speak of a still-stand.

I’ve been very pleased to see Hitchcock’s “the birds”. While on the one hand the birds give my paintings a lightness and humour, on the other hand they also appear as angst creating creatures. They are a threatening element. The hybrid, the bird-human, especially the Greek mythological bird-woman, is often read as death helper. 

The bird might also get a threatening character due to its atypical proportions?

That’s true. In some of the paintings the bird, due to its size, gives course to a certain angst feeling. The disproportions supply the motifs with a kind of fragility, as you both recognize and feel a stranger to the identification in the picture.

However, the dimensions must also be seen in relation to the collage technique, with its mixture of different type of pictures. And it must be seen in relation to the directions in the paintings, the work with fore- and background, and with the position of the spectator. With the help of diagonals and the working in of a low laying position of the spectator in the foreground of the painting, the element of suspense and voyeurism, becomes a part of several – though not all – expressions of the works. To a great extent I have been inspired by the artist L.C.Armstrong, whose work with cross-going movement in the picture surface ties together the motif.  It is a sort of mental construction in which an event in the background is answered by an incident in the foreground. 

In Linda Christine Armstrongs works giant flower vines twist themselves cross the picture surface and hampers the view to a scenery lying behind, whose nature romanticism, on closer inspection, turns out to be subdued to surprises which deny all logics. We are talking about a kind of dysfunctional, post apocalyptic landscapes, which are both impressive and disturbing at the same time. Also in Lise Blombergs work nature romanticism is practised – added to it an at times morbid element of excitement.

I’m interested in an elementary beauty. The beautiful and touching about flowers landscapes and kisses. In a painting like “Obstacle on the way home” you immediately perceive the sensual love, but then you might notice the ambivalent significations in the title. The painting then suddenly becomes a story of not being able to create a happy home, or maybe even a story about infidelity. 

I’m a nature romanticist, but at the same time I seek the excitement you can find by moving in the borderland between story and reality, between the surreal and the real. You don’t know with certainty what’s an inner and what’s an outer event. I often use figures with closed eyes in my paintings – figures that are to be found in a kind of a landscape of their own. In those paintings what is presented is the human projection and imaginations of landscape.     

My motifs have been interpreted as taking place in a post-mortem universe. At first I was shocked to hear this, but I can see, that a kind of coupling between different worlds is taking place. The paintings are situated in the borderline between being and not being.  

The unknown factor is often perceived as fascinating. Sleep and the unconscious may, like death, be perceived as unknown land, as something beyond. It is insinuated in my works that the birds appearing are helpers who can bring you to “another land”.

A helper to make you reach deeper into yourself, so to speak?

Yes. In the interpretation of dreams you say that if you meet an animal in your dreams, you should make it your friend. 

Some paintings are relatively empty, whereas others are more filled. What does this mean?

It is a formal technique, but may also be read in terms of content. At a certain time I was very inspired by Japanese aesthetic – its special lightness and the fact that formally you have the sense of the white canvas or paper. The emptiness may, however, also be an element in the story of sleep and this way has a psychological meaning in the reading of the work.

What is your relationship with surrealism?

I want to distance myself from it, and I do feel that there is a difference. My works are in a greater dialogue with semiotics then with the interpretation of dreams. At the same time I am using some of the same techniques as the surrealists used; for instance by referring directly to the form of collage. I collect pictures that inspire me, and in the collecting phase I find a quick reaction important: If the picture captures me I take it – and only afterwards I reflect upon the choice. Moving beyond ones own mechanisms of control and entering the work more directly is a surreal technique. 

In my smaller works I like to let studies of nature and watercolour paintings work as sources, and the finished collage with its emblematic character has thus been stimulated by a more direct observation of nature. It may be compared with the classic flower painting with a mixture of naturalism and symbolism.

Something happens when you put pictures together, whether it happens on paper or on a wall. The mixture of different types of picture produces different and exciting spaces. Small, condensed pictures and large empty pictures engage in a special type of  “conversation” which may be both about relationship and loneliness. It may be compared with the different ways in which consciousness works: Although the dream does not necessarily materialize in the real world, a kind of dialogue nevertheless arises. 

Have you experienced a leitmotif in the pictures that have inspired you?

There have been many pictures of nature, and pictures I have been able to identify with at different points in my life. The experiences of the pictures have always been those of recognition. In this way I have clarified things for myself and found identification in the work.

I think that therapy in art is a good thing. The problems of the individual often turn out to be of a universally valid nature. I think you might characterise art as collective therapy. Of course some artists work quite formally, and thus their works get a different character. But the idea that art does not have a mission is not correct according to my opinion.

How would you like people to leave your paintings?

With a certain opening of their mind.