Artist Christian Bundegaard studied architecture and philosophy. He has worked as a diplomat, in radio broadcasting, journalism and publishing, and is the author of several books. The son of a newspaper cartoonist, his childhood was all drawing and painting. When he grew older, he realized that he had to carve out his own work space, and writing was easy.
"I got published, started translating books and writing reviews to make a living. Of that came work in media and diplomacy. And as it is with a career - you can even hear the carrier in the word itself - it tends to carry you off, and painting moved somewhat into the distance, something to long for, like the land on the other side of my childhood bay."
When he started to paint professionally, it was indeed that childhood view, from reality and his fathers drawings, of the stripes - the beach, the sea, the sky, land on the other side of the bay, plus sometimes a boat - that he found he could paint. "I was not really thinking of my slabs and stripes as abstractions. On a foggy winters day or in strong sunshine or at dusk or, anytime really, that view simply is like this. And I find this view where ever I go." This is the way architecture and philosophy seeps into his work - as the drawn landscape and the abstraction. A rather concrete abstraction, though; "I’ve never taken to neither concepts nor narratives in painting."
Transitioning from writing to visual art brought a surprise revelation,"Sometimes I feel it is exactly the same I am doing. After one slab a painting needs the next. After one sentence, the text is demanding the next. And words are like colours - you are always looking for the right one, and you always wish there would be more of them."
Bundegaard's interest in his practice gradually grew as he progressed with painting. "I’ve started to prefer museums to libraries - paintings are (most of the time) more inviting than backs of books. I love the idea of my paintings hanging on people’s walls. It is a very primitive, territorial dog-pissing thing from deep down, and not very civilized. It is almost erotic, is it not?"
"I live a very ordinary still-life, both on Mallorca and in Brussels."
He currently divides his time between Brussels and Mallorca, working in preparation for an exhibition in Denmark. His work is exploring the unknown side-labyrinths of the landscapes and stone walls he has been at for a while. "As I tend to paint my landscapes on canvases turned to vertical portrait format, I am looking for something more interesting to fill the top voids than my dreamish skies/here-ends-the-painting-areas."Â Â
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