Paintings

A Haven

Solo Exhibition at ArtC Haderslev DK, Juni 2024

At an Artist Residency in Oaxaca, Mexico in October 2023, I worked for a month in a studio overlooking a terrace with red tiles, the red walls of the house, and blue mountains on the horizon, in short, a paradise on earth.

The garden and cultural center CaSa was designed by the Mexican artist Fransisco Toledo, cacti and exotic succulents are planted in giant pots and in beds between the red tiles. Ever since the work stay, I have worked with the colors, the peachy/red from the tiles and buildings, and all the green shades from the cacti and succulents.

Solo exhibition by Indigo Richards March 2023
Galleri Sandberg, Vestergade 102, 5000 Odense C, DK

METAL MOUNTAIN

After returning to Odense from Spain a residency at the Valparaiso Foundation in southern Spain near Mojácar la Vieja mountain (2022), I became fascinated by the ‘mountain’ next door to my studio in the Marius Pedersen scrap yard – a heap of waste iron and other metals.

From a distance, the metal mountain glimmers like a pile of silver and diamonds.

People have lived on Mojácar la Vieja mountain from time immemorial, and their waste and bones have become an integral part of the mountain. The mountain has a unique staircase-like shape, created by humans. But today it is totally overgrown, conquered by nature.

Within the heap of metal on Havnegade in Odense DK, sand and soil have come into contact with the metal, and plants are attempting to root and generate new life. This metal mountain is a kind of living organism that you can smell and hear in the building next door.

The rhythm from the machines next door make an indelible impact on Indigo Richards’ gestures, her brush strokes and the movements of her hands, the smell affects her senses and her mood is reflected in shades of grey.

Since June 2022, my countless studies of the metal mountain have evolved. Initially, I used my body, arm or hand as a brush. Later, I added glued-on aluminium (silver paper) as a means of expression. In addition to the watery acrylic paint that I work with, this time round I have used oil paint – for  glazing, for example.

WATERING FLOWERS

Galleri Sandberg, 2021

In Autumn 2020 I started up a new project with the working titel; The liquid state of water. I made a lot of silly experiments using water from different public ponds in Odense mixing it up with my acrylic paint. Then I began working with swirls of water, I studied the swirl in my studio sink and in the lakes I visited. I pour water onto my canvas and swirl it around.  The forms that grew from my gestures looked like flowers. Strong and wild growths. I like the simplicity of the banal motif the single flower and the movement in the center the pistil.

 

 

VISIBLE LIGHT (Transferring information with light)

2020 Modtager, with Anders Qvist Nielsen, homegallery in our apartement in Odense DK

In spring 2020 during the first lockdown in Denmark, I made the series; Visible light. Electromagnetic waves, as we know, can transfer a picture of a person, from the other end of the world, to a screen. Working on my former project; In Our Face Time, I was constantly reminded about this scientific miracle. I then imagined how signals, were transported through the air, and painted abstract paintings, where the wet paint in layers resembled light pulses and data.

 

 

Hi Neighbor 

Neighbors are not your friends, your family, nor people you work with, they are something different. They are very close to you physically, you are involved in their daily life, but you don’t know them. Painting your neighbors is a random choice of subject/motif. There is a method, a system, the next apartment or house. You get invited in, and now you know more about the people who live next to you. I like the coincidental choice of subject, and the “gifts” it brings, as well as I like the accidents and random flow of the water, in my acrylic paint and watercolor/aquarelle.

Text in Danish : Anna Krogh tekst til Hi Neighbor