Do you remember when it appeared to you that a brush and a brush could be two very different things? Here I do not mean the difference between a brush for decorating the ceiling of an apartment and a brush for making miniature enamel broaches, but the difference within the same category of brushes. The category of brushes was in my case that of water colour brushes.

As most other kids in my childhood – yes, it was way back in the past century – we painted occasionally at school or at home using water, round flat pigment panes (5 or 10 in a flat metal box), ordinary paper and brushes.

The brushes usually were of one size only, small, and their life expectancy very short when living a rough life in the hands of kids. Well, the kids were not all to blame. In hindsight I know that the brushes were low quality and did not have the robustness of modern synthetic brushes. All this lead to our brushes very soon looking like withered marguerites or dandelions run over by a car. And when they looked like that the fun of painting quickly faded and distractions from other activities took over the attention – and that was usually the end of the engagement with fine art.

Later, as a student, I began flirting with water colours and gradually learned that paper and paper could be very different things, and so could colour pigments and certainly also brushes. The synthetic brushes for fine art started to enter the market by then, but soon I became aware of the mantra that serious artists bought the best brushes they could afford. (Much later Inge told me that the same holds true for photographers. They ought to by the best lenses they can afford).

And soon I felt that should I seriously progress and gain control of my material I needed good brushes. You know these brushes that can hold lots of water, remain flexible and pointed and have the important dynamic behaviour when interfacing between the artist’s hand and the paper.

I got introduced to Kolinsky brushes! And when observing with which veneration the dealer described the origin of the hairs, carefully picked from the chests and/or tails of those Siberian sables, and when listening to his superlatives of the reactivity and dynamics of these brushes I certainly felt that they would bring my art forward – or if not that, at least give me more pleasure when painting.

So I bought a few, and later a few more, and when I had finally acquired a good collection, what happened then? I stopped painting with water colours! Well, let’s say that a pause installed itself – and when I years later took up doing water colours again it was on a totally different scale. The paper size had shrunk to that of post cards, the pigments came from water soluble crayons (of a good Swiss brand, though) and the quality of brushes was reduced to that of cotton buds, literally!

Yes, when taking up water colouring again it was in the form of travelling sketches only. After the day’s meetings I would relax in the hotel’s garden at the shore of the lake, order a glass of wine from the region and a glass of water. The wine would be for me and the water for the cotton bud.

Hey, what happened to the ambitions that led me to buying brushes of the finest quality, you may think. Did they wither and go down the drain?

No, let’s say that my attention got diverted towards other media and materials. Textiles, for example, which when treated with paint usually require synthetic brushes.

And recently I have been introduced to the digital brush, so you see that the treason towards my original youthful ambition of evolving with Kolinsky brushes does continue.

I still have all the Kolinskys, and all the other brushes I’ve bought, which have not been worn down. Since I’m as lazy as I am, you can easily imagine that my collection is big. So big, that Inge calls me a brush maniac!

We’re not sure we will meet the deadline, but all day yesterday we worked on a piece intended for an exhibition in the fall, the theme of which is “The Sky’s the Limit”. So, when rolling down the stores, switching off the lights and closing down the computers at day’s end I very appropriately noted the weather forecast Inge includes on her desktop. It promised a cobalt blue sky, without a single cloud and a bright rejuvenating sunshine – all day! So, when heading for my bed I imagined how I would greet the next morning as the stores rolled up again, how the sunlight would press on as the first millimetres of free window space appeared and how it irresistibly would flood the apartment – to my great pleasure.

I love these mornings and often think how nice it would be just to enjoy them at their own pace…

Maybe you can imagine me this morning, standing there in my pyjama bare-feet on the wooden floor watching the stores rolling up – all set to welcome the morning sunlight and let it bathe my feet and gradually the rest of me. I already started to feel this kind of rejuvenation when it dawned upon me that this feeling must be a placebo effect. Because outside it was snowing!

There’s nothing wrong with a winter scene. On the contrary! It has its own magical diffuse light that softens shadows and reduces contrasts in the townscape and lends roofs with the role of fields in a three dimensional composition of varying values. Since childhood I’ve liked experiencing the surprise that waking up to a white townscape bears with it – I just hadn’t expected that 180 degrees turn in the morning weather!

But this change probably made me more observant than I otherwise would have been what regarded the sky above me as it evolved from this winterish light grey to something more spring-like towards noon when clouds cleared here and there to end up grey and heavy as lead by late afternoon.

The phrase “The Sky’s the Limit” is mostly used to state that a given condition has no limit at all, because there in relative terms for the normal mortals is no limit to the sky  from an altitude point of view – it seems never to end. I nevertheless felt that today the sky did indeed have a limit. Could that be because of the attenuating effect it had on my mood early in the morning where my expectations overshot realities – a little like when we find an art exhibition of limited interest because it shows artwork differing from our expectations?

Or am I the one who set the limits today because I was not adapting to circumstances and did not master the excellence of getting the best out of a situation? Well, the light of the snowy morning was very special indeed, the ragged clouds at noon full of change and the afternoon sky heavy and dramatic.

So, maybe I was the limiting factor, and not the sky…

In the Parisian Metro, the other morning, while waiting for the train to roll in I noticed the striking contrast between the line of people on the opposite platform waiting for their train and a large advertisement for vacation on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.The contrast was marked by the bright clothes worn by the person in the vacation ad standing out against the overwhelming trend amongst morning commuters to wear dark clothes.

Why is it so, I wondered?

Why is there is an overwhelming tendency to dress in boringly dark clothes during the darkest period of the year, while when all the light is available during summer there is a tendency to dress in lighter hues.

Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Periods with little daylight can in itself be depressing, or at least not optimistic per se, so shouldn’t that cause people to counteract by wearing bright and colourful clothes to boost la morale?

That question led me to wonder whether there are similarities between this winter dressing habits and art reflecting winter. All disclaimers out – I’m by no means an art historian – but it appears to me that art related to or inspired by winter often has undertones of optimism and sometimes even express joyful play with the crisp light of a frosty day.

On the other side, in dark times, psychologically seen (e.g. during wartime, catastrophes) artists seem to apply the darker, sombre hues instead of trying to counteract with bright, vibrant and optimistic hues. The reason is probably that art here takes on the action of telling a story, passing on a sombre and dramatic message.

This I can understand, but why – on a topic so mundane and insignificant as winter garments and coats – is it that most people lean to the darker hues for their everyday clothes? Why do they not do as they do on the ski resorts in the mountains where the dress code dictates colours, colours and colours?

Well, I can start asking myself that question. The trousers and coat I wore that morning were black!

Some days recently spent on the northernmost tip of Denmark, surrounded by the sea, bathed in light and exposed to strong winds influenced me in several ways.

Some of them were evident while being on the spot: distraction from everyday life, reviving the visual senses and acknowledgement of the power of light and the fabulous texture found in wet sand – just to mention some.

I was very aware of many of these influences, but one escaped me – the olfactory rejuvenation!

What reminded me about this? Well, it was coming home after the first day at work in Paris. It appeared to me that my woollen jacket smelled – and not exactly pleasantly. I noted that it was not a distinct and immediately discernible smell. Rather a melange of smells which I with some curiosity began to analyse.

I detected smoke, a chaos of perfumes and deodorants, body odours, French fries, burgers and old dust. Compiled this meant: The Parisian Metro. 20 minutes packed like sardines in a tin on line 4 with all kind of people coming from all kind of places do leave their marks.

The similarity I found between this olfactory awareness and the art world was the effect travelling often has on artists – and the understanding why travelling often is a must for artists to keep the creative juices flowing.

I was surprised by suddenly noting this melange of smells, which probably often is in my clothes when I return from Paris but had gone unnoticed so far. So I can imagine the impact the visual surprises of going to new places have had on artists in bygone times.

Take the two 1800′s artists the sculpture of whom I used in the illustration for last week’s blog. They both travelled to Italy as part of their artistic education. Imagine their surprises when discovering in real life the differences in light, hues and values, landscape, architecture, fauna, people and culture.

But like the smell in my jacket, after a while you get used to it, your vigilance gets dimmed, your artistic reaction scheme requires new stimuli.

Maybe this is why there will always be some hobo components in our behaviour that surface time and again?

The other day we had this special experience of walking through light of art. Being up here at the northernmost tip of the Jutland peninsula we profited from the fair morning weather to walk as far out on the tip as possible. The light was this type of very bright and light (sic) light that rendered the sand and grass in the dunes with crispness we’re not used to and the sky changed from milky haze above the horizon to light cobalt higher up in the sky. The whole scenery had such a positive impact that it practically lifted the migraine out of my head and sent it up to the seagulls above to play with.

It is this light a group of artists some 100 years ago made famous through their expressive artwork, and Inge and I felt spontaneously that we walked in a piece painted by P. S. Krøyer, who virtuously applied light in his compositions.

In the afternoon of that same day we curiously enough had the diametrically opposite experience with the light up here. Bad weather had been gathering since noon, clouds piling up and late afternoon the sky was dramatically dark, showers moving in from the sea, the wind amplifying the breakers and whirling the sand up and forcefully sending it our way as we walked in the dunes.

Believe it or not, but again we spontaneously felt that we walked in a piece of artwork – this time painted by M. Ancher, who through close-up compositions depicted dramatic scenes around the fishermen of Skagen. Stormy weather in sombre hues often added drama to the scene.

Over a glass of wine before dinner we reflected a little over this change in light caused by the change in weather and what it did to the scenery. The two artists mentioned above have seen the same kind of light as Inge and I – and all variations in between. Why did one choose the lighter light and the other the heavier light?

Did the artists’ individual mindsets make the choice of motif based on the type of light available – or did they chose different types of motifs, which required different types of light?