Tatjana Bladt-Cohen. Manifestations.

My time in this wonderful snowy bubble is drawing to a close, and I already know I will miss the beautiful calm and the quiet this space has granted me. With this I have been able to focus in on my work, thanks to the lack of distractions, and also the impossibility of comparing myself to others. While it has been sometimes quite confronting, these weeks have allowed me to become self reliant in this respect and be more confident in the artistic choices I have made whilst here.

I began with many grand ideas, but gradually narrowed them down to the concept of manifestations being my main project whilst I’ve been here. The concept is that by naming a thing, it brings it into being. This originates from many different stories in the past, one of which was the custom in Northern European countries of calling bears ‘brown things’, for fear that naming them would magically summon them to the village and cause destruction.

Then, I overlapped this idea with Finnish folklore of the vedenemo, and will-o-wisps and Näkki etc, and local and personal family history in a series of paintings. The paintings also bring in other layers such as story vs religion, child vs adult imagination, but my overall intention is to create a piece which anyone can connect to and perhaps then use it to contribute to the tradition of story telling.

On my return to Amsterdam I will continue this series, as I am sure there are many wonderous creatures yet to be captured by word, image and brush. And of course taking the Finnish strength with me.

The lovely view from my desk

‘Brown thing’

End of day