Hey Folks, here is another interview I made with a great artist, a painter whom I was lucky to meet and talk to. I hope you'll have fun reading it and look at his work! He is very god and a very amazing person.
Jan Bo, you are a painter and an architect and are coming from Danmark but now you are living in London.
If I remember right since four years and since that time you are also working mostly as a painter. Is that right?
Yes, since 2011 I have been drawing and painting in London. I have slowly been transforming myself into a figurative artist, looking at people and making my emotional responses from what I see and feel - sometimes stories built from glimpses into human behaviour and the way fate brings people together, sometimes purely a transcription like a courthouse drawing. It is portraiture and storytelling for me. I do it from an observational perspective, and whether I'm noticed or unnoticed is often reflected in my work.
If I look at your work, I see a different style of technique and you use different ways of making a picture. You do arcrylic paint, but also oil. I also see that you use pins and so I see a mix of painting and drawing. How come?
In the search to express my observations, exploring different and challenging materials has been essential. Sometimes the use of mixed media has been a way to show the complexity of the scene and capture different layers.
So, with those different techniques you create art and as I could see on Instagram and Pinterest you seem to go through a lot of stages before the last painting of a t.ex. human is finished. You also show those several steps to people- why?
I often find it very difficult to tell when a drawing or painting is finished. I do like to record the progress and I don't mind sharing my journey. Some earlier stages may tell a different story, and as the story progresses, the painting is changing, the drawing is changing, and the figures are somehow clarifying and dissolving at the same time.
You also show your sketches. You have a sketch book if I am right.
The sketchbook has over the years become a guideline - sort of a chronometer or diary. It is with me at most times, and I try to make notations and records of things I see and feel. I love drawing while I'm out - I have made the whole of London my studio. Whether I'm among strangers or friends and family, it is a dialogue - a language for me. I can step away from the conversation and make myself a spectator, but I feel I'm still in dialogue with them via my painting and making such a record of the whole experience.
Well, from what I saw of the sketch book I would call it art and cannot help but wonder if someone, when the book is finished, wants to buy this collection of sketches, as I have the feeling when going through them it is like reading a wonderful book, would it be possible to buy it?
To part with the book seems difficult right now. I would like to one day perhaps publish an edited version of the sketchbook or should I say several sketchbooks. There are some highlights, lowlights and experiments that I'd like to share. But mostly I see it as a tool for my development, and in the future I will be making more paintings from my sketches.
Is it right you paint every day? That would also mean you must have a lot of great sketch books at the end, is that right?
I paint and draw every day. It is essential for my being as an artist to produce and record. Lucian Freud said ...
I had the luck to watch you sketch people and you seem to have a fast eye and a good sense of catching emotions and feelings. Was it always like that or did this become stronger with time?
I would like to think there is constant progress but unfortunately it is not always like that. They are dead ends for me and sometimes I take one step forward and two steps back. I have developed a stronger certainty of my way of working and don’t get very concerned about the opinions of the people around me while I'm painting and drawing. Sometimes there can be quite an encouragement from bystanders to change things or from people who are not happy with their appearance.
Next question leads us further to the question what or who inspires you as an artist?
I read you have been many time to the National Gallery in London and studied t.ex. The Immaculate Conception by Diego Velázquez.
I look to the old masters and I'm hugely inspired by their techniques, their concessions, and their ability to capture difficult and emotional topics. I draw often from other people's art to make it my own, to take it in, and I don't regard my drawings from them as copies but as individual works of art.
You know, the last question is actually about the fact that you paint mostly humans. Different kind of people, like a Punk Dj, naked women and man and also people in a Pub. You seem to like them, but the style is very different in which you paint them. Some portraits reminds us of pictures from Albrecht Dürer and Francisco Goya, because of the dark background. Others more of Van Gogh and other paintings of the way you did paint in 1910 till '40, as you use a lot of colours in them.
You have mostly a more raw style, but when you paint naked people or others then your way of painting is more soft. Has this a reason or does it just happen to match what you see?
I love people and their diversity. I see people kind of like components in an electrical device in the way that they interact, working together and making life.
I saw you once or twice put out on Pinterest a series of variation of the same man you painted- like we could follow the process but as I saw all those five or seven versions I wonder if you can buy those as a series as you showed on the internet? I talk about the " Getting the man out of the canvas" series t.ex..
Those images are purely process and a way for me to guide me in the paint process. Posting wile the work is unfinished have given me feedback and further inspiration and I think this is one of the things I have learned from using Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest.
If I remember right since four years and since that time you are also working mostly as a painter. Is that right?
Yes, since 2011 I have been drawing and painting in London. I have slowly been transforming myself into a figurative artist, looking at people and making my emotional responses from what I see and feel - sometimes stories built from glimpses into human behaviour and the way fate brings people together, sometimes purely a transcription like a courthouse drawing. It is portraiture and storytelling for me. I do it from an observational perspective, and whether I'm noticed or unnoticed is often reflected in my work.
If I look at your work, I see a different style of technique and you use different ways of making a picture. You do arcrylic paint, but also oil. I also see that you use pins and so I see a mix of painting and drawing. How come?
In the search to express my observations, exploring different and challenging materials has been essential. Sometimes the use of mixed media has been a way to show the complexity of the scene and capture different layers.
So, with those different techniques you create art and as I could see on Instagram and Pinterest you seem to go through a lot of stages before the last painting of a t.ex. human is finished. You also show those several steps to people- why?
I often find it very difficult to tell when a drawing or painting is finished. I do like to record the progress and I don't mind sharing my journey. Some earlier stages may tell a different story, and as the story progresses, the painting is changing, the drawing is changing, and the figures are somehow clarifying and dissolving at the same time.
You also show your sketches. You have a sketch book if I am right.
The sketchbook has over the years become a guideline - sort of a chronometer or diary. It is with me at most times, and I try to make notations and records of things I see and feel. I love drawing while I'm out - I have made the whole of London my studio. Whether I'm among strangers or friends and family, it is a dialogue - a language for me. I can step away from the conversation and make myself a spectator, but I feel I'm still in dialogue with them via my painting and making such a record of the whole experience.
Well, from what I saw of the sketch book I would call it art and cannot help but wonder if someone, when the book is finished, wants to buy this collection of sketches, as I have the feeling when going through them it is like reading a wonderful book, would it be possible to buy it?
To part with the book seems difficult right now. I would like to one day perhaps publish an edited version of the sketchbook or should I say several sketchbooks. There are some highlights, lowlights and experiments that I'd like to share. But mostly I see it as a tool for my development, and in the future I will be making more paintings from my sketches.
Is it right you paint every day? That would also mean you must have a lot of great sketch books at the end, is that right?
I paint and draw every day. It is essential for my being as an artist to produce and record. Lucian Freud said ...
I had the luck to watch you sketch people and you seem to have a fast eye and a good sense of catching emotions and feelings. Was it always like that or did this become stronger with time?
I would like to think there is constant progress but unfortunately it is not always like that. They are dead ends for me and sometimes I take one step forward and two steps back. I have developed a stronger certainty of my way of working and don’t get very concerned about the opinions of the people around me while I'm painting and drawing. Sometimes there can be quite an encouragement from bystanders to change things or from people who are not happy with their appearance.
Next question leads us further to the question what or who inspires you as an artist?
I read you have been many time to the National Gallery in London and studied t.ex. The Immaculate Conception by Diego Velázquez.
I look to the old masters and I'm hugely inspired by their techniques, their concessions, and their ability to capture difficult and emotional topics. I draw often from other people's art to make it my own, to take it in, and I don't regard my drawings from them as copies but as individual works of art.
You know, the last question is actually about the fact that you paint mostly humans. Different kind of people, like a Punk Dj, naked women and man and also people in a Pub. You seem to like them, but the style is very different in which you paint them. Some portraits reminds us of pictures from Albrecht Dürer and Francisco Goya, because of the dark background. Others more of Van Gogh and other paintings of the way you did paint in 1910 till '40, as you use a lot of colours in them.
You have mostly a more raw style, but when you paint naked people or others then your way of painting is more soft. Has this a reason or does it just happen to match what you see?
I love people and their diversity. I see people kind of like components in an electrical device in the way that they interact, working together and making life.
I saw you once or twice put out on Pinterest a series of variation of the same man you painted- like we could follow the process but as I saw all those five or seven versions I wonder if you can buy those as a series as you showed on the internet? I talk about the " Getting the man out of the canvas" series t.ex..
Those images are purely process and a way for me to guide me in the paint process. Posting wile the work is unfinished have given me feedback and further inspiration and I think this is one of the things I have learned from using Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest.
Looking on your pictures, paintings and sketches they seem all like old/ classic but new/modern in the same time, thought you just have started your work as an artist.
But you started as an architect. Seems the connection to people is also very strong there as I saw your work in the Danish Design Centre at the exhibition "Honey I'm home". There you ask in your work- 2007: "Can a person live in a sandwich?"
Yes, how come an architect goes into painting?
How come that many architects have a near bond to art?
For me, it is all really linked. There are in theory no limits, it is very fluid, and while what I'm doing at the moment is not architecture, I could not have created it without my background.
Last question now.
Where can people see your work now or in the future? Is there any exhibition in planing?
I'm working on getting my first London show and finding a gallery to represent me in the future.
Now I will thank you for giving me the chance to ask you all those questions. For the readers will now follow the links to the sides on Pinterest and Instagram... and of course some of your paintings and work in process to see. Thank you.
https://instagram.com/jbvp8000https://www.tumblr.com/search/Dexx8000
Her are some of his works:
all pictures are made and owned by Jan Bo Vinter Poulsen!
LOVE & LIGHT
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