Olafur Arnalds and the Fall

Clinging, Slipping, 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, graphite, and wax on panel

7.5" x 7.5"

This small work was created while listening to seven sublime tracks* by Olafur Arnalds that are available for free here. Arnalds' "Found Songs" are improbably beautiful for compositions that were put together one-a-day over the course of a week. I cannot imagine what he's capable of producing given a more gracious schedule. 

As I'm never quite sure just how long promotional giveaways are intended to last I would encourage anyone who has a modicum of love for sparsity, simplicity, and the melancholic to download them promptly.

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Clinging, Slipping is a cropped variation of a much larger image of a waterfall that I've been working on in the studio. Both the large and small compositions have a ground of silver leaf that produces an elusive sheen beneath the black silhouettes of quivering vegetation and fallen logs. I found the original image in a flea market outside of Bend, Oregon and was immediately taken with the emptiness of the composition— it was so poorly exposed that all of the water in the fall had simply become a mass of white that consumed two-thirds of the composition. While I'm pleased that Clinging, Slipping turned out as well as it did, I'm not yet convinced that I'll be able to wrangle a successful work from the larger image. . . we'll see what a little rubbing alcohol and cold wax will do over the coming weekend.

*Recommended by Colorado artist Nathan Abels, who provides a weekly link on his blog to free music conducive to creative work.