Conversation – Inner Images of The Soul
By Marie Laurberg
November 2022

 

Copenhagen November 2022. Marie Laurberg (ML) in conversation with Cathrine Raben Davidsen (CRD)

ML

I’d like to start by asking about a new direction in your painting. You’re an artist who comes out of figurative painting, but the human figure is entirely absent from a number of your new works, which feature big, quite complex landscapes. How did that change come about? What made you dive into that subject matter?

 

CRD

Landscape is actually very near to me. I’m a real city kid. I was born and raised in inner Copenhagen. But I spent my summers on Bornholm, where I had my first significant encounters with nature. In particular, I remember a place with a small forest lake called Gråmyr, in Gudhjem Plantation, where I picked water lilies and caught tadpoles that I brought home to my aunt and uncle’s house. They had a big water basin in the yard where I could put the tadpoles and watch them grow into frogs. When they were big, we released them back into Gråmyr. Later, when I lived in Tuscany, I used to get up before sunrise and paint the misty landscape. Getting up at five in the morning and watching the sunrise is one of the best times to paint a landscape, because it has this mystique. There’s a unique calm, and you have to be completely present and observe the tiny variations in the light, which is constantly changing. Foggy and undefinable, it’s a dissolved or imaginary landscape.

 

As soon as the sun is up, the landscape is too green and the sky too blue. In recent years, I’ve been increasingly attracted to painting animals, biomorphic growths, cells and so on. Landscape has been coming back to me, too. In some of my paintings with figures in this book, you can see that the landscape has been taking over more and more, and that my interest is in the backgrounds.

 

ML

Landscape is quite loaded subject matter. It rests on a heavy historical heritage. What gave you the courage and confidence to plunge into it, to present Cathrine Raben Davidsen’s version of grand nature? Was it a leap for you as an artist?

 

CRD

I do actually think it’s brave of me to take up landscape as a worthwhile subject. Many consider it ‘Romantic’, even old-fashioned, to paint landscape, because it has such a heavy heritage and history. But landscape is a subject that occupies a lot of artists today.

 

In our part of the world, there was always this view that God gave us the Earth and dominion over nature. The same belief is found in the Christian creation story, which says that humans were made in the image of God to rule over nature. Children encounter that story in religion class and we’re schooled from an early age to place humans at the center. There are different takes on this, of course. Some believe that humans have been given responsibility for nature, that we are not just rulers but shepherds of the earth. Today, a number of philosophical movements – like Transhumanism and Deep Ecology, which are both thought-provoking – place nature, animals and plants on a par with or even above humans. I can relate to that. Before grand nature, you can really lose yourself, in the best way. Your ego takes a backseat. Nature is grand and amazing. It contains everything. Nature is a place where we can find calm and feel connected. It’s not just there for our sake. There has to be mutual dependence and interconnection. Another movement, Posthumanism, has emerged that imagines a world entirely without people. Is that where we’re headed? Maybe.

 

ML

Several of your landscapes are titled As above, so below. What does that title refer to?

 

CRD

The concept of As above, so below is found in many philosophical movements, including ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and in Plato.

 

The title is from an occult text supposedly written by the Hellenistic god Hermes Trismegistus. It’s the idea that one single entity is behind everything. In other words, the world is connected like one big organism. The stars in the sky are linked to life on earth, and microcosm and macrocosm are interconnected. The human world is related to the greater universe. Everything is connected. Anything that happens in nature and the universe is reflected in the human body, and vice versa.

 

We can also use the text to understand our situation today. How should we be in the world? How should we live? And how can we change and learn from the present situation? I think we learned a lot from the pandemic. We turned to basic values. We are driven by progress and results, but back in the age of Plato, people were already talking about understanding humanity in microcosmic and macrocosmic terms. I find that incredibly exciting.

 

Our view of nature has changed through history. Primitive cultures had a more immediate connection to nature, seeing themselves and nature as an organic whole. Today, we live with a consciousness of nature as separate from us. We have lost our understanding of our dependence on the complex systems of nature, precisely because we have followed a way of thinking that puts humanity at the center of everything.

 

ML

You’re very inspired by texts – philosophy, mythology and literature. But when I look at your paintings, they don’t seem literary at all but very painterly. They very much come out of the process of painting. They are quite textural, colour-saturated and expressive, real painterly. Your technique as a painter is very traditional in a way, because you’re clearly concerned with the many devices of painting, the interplay of colours, and highly refined effects that were developed in modern painting but have existed in classical painting since the Renaissance. Are you inspired by landscapes by particular artists, and how?

 

CRD

Edvard Munch has a special place in my heart, because he too worked with the great themes of life, with suffering and anxiety and all the other things that affect us. I love this quote by Munch, from a 1908 sketchbook:

 

“Nature is not only what is visible to the eye – it is also the inner images of the soul – on the back of the eye.” (Skisseblok 1908)

 

I don’t know if I understand Munch, but maybe the quote is about how we are part of nature. Munch’s landscapes are unique, because he represents nature as something that infuses human emotion. He shows how humanity is both subordinate to nature and can intercede in it, how nature exists both as a physical reality and as an emotional reaction and concept. He plants his figures in the landscape. They literally grow out of it.

 

 

ML

As I see it, your landscapes are very emotional. They are not so much a recording of a place as a representation of a particular sensation you might have – of standing at the water’s edge at a particular time of day in a particular light. What’s the significance of landscape and nature to you personally and as an artist?

 

CRD

My landscapes aren’t ‘real’ landscapes. They are more every landscape, all landscapes in one. The lack of perspective and the layering help draw the viewer into the paintings. In a way, they are like looking into the layers of the earth and our history. In my new paintings, I’ve found a calm that allows me to let a landscape be a landscape. Nature brings you face to face with something you can’t quite fathom, that’s much bigger than you. My landscapes give you a little bit of that feeling, and it’s important that they have a size that allows you to get lost in them.

 

All the paintings have an element of autobiography, but that’s not important to me at all. In fact, I’d like to get away from that aspect. My works should be able to stand on their own, and you should be able to understand them on many different levels. I like that they have all these layers. I enjoy that way of thinking. My reference is my own photos of places I’ve been that I cut up and collage. The paintings are based on them. There’s no central perspective, no guide for your eye on the surface. In that way, I also eliminate the distance, compelling the viewer’s gaze down and into the work. The landscapes bring the universe down to earth, in a positive sense.

 

ML

Your landscapes have many, many layers. When you look at them close up, you sense more layers hidden in their depths – some solid, others transparent, washy or grainy. There are many pictures to explore within each painting. How do you concretely build you paintings?

 

CRD

I paint in oil and turpentine and spend months on one painting. But I always work on several paintings at once, because the drying times are long, and I have to wait before I can continue painting. I always start by roughly blocking in the subject in raw sienna, and then let it dry for a couple of days before I start painting in colour. Really old school. I spend a long time mixing colours. That’s actually one of the best things about painting for me, nerding out on tiny nuances. I never use a colour straight from the tube. I have to have a completely clean palette for all the colours before mixing them. If I’m feeling lazy and only put a couple of colours on the palette, it shows in the painting.

 

ML

What’s the unique power of painting, as you see it?

 

CRD

I use the layers of my works as artefacts that become part of the story and the time I spent painting. Slowness is extremely important. I don’t find that in any other part of my life, unfortunately. For me, painting is like meditation.

The slowness of it. The history. The magic of following a painter’s hand and motions. Standing before a masterpiece, whether it’s thousands of years old or brand new. That’s special. We can still learn something from painting, but it takes presence, kind of like nature does.

 

ML

What’s the rest of the process towards the finished picture like. Do you use sketches? Do you have an image of the finished work in your head before you begin?

 

CRD

I do, actually. But the sketches are collages and clippings from photographs I took with my iPhone in places I’ve been. It’s important for me to paint places that I know, that I have physically been in and sensed, so that the landscape, when I paint it, has personal significance to me and isn’t just a picture of a random place. But the paintings aren’t about particular places. As I paint, I almost always study works by other artists. They serve as ‘studies’ or sketches. In my studio, I have all my inspirations and references laid out on the floor and tabletops. All over the place, actually. It’s one big chaotic mess when I begin. Right now, there are photocopies of pictures by Edvard Munch, Michael Armitage, Gauguin, Marlene Dumas and Mamma Andersson. Preferably close-ups of works I’ve seen in real life and photographed.

 

ML

As I see it, part of what ties your work together, and something I’ve always admired you for, is that you rise far, far above the everyday – into a universal, transhistorical and sometimes spiritual space. Grand myths, big questions, the great human drama. That also sets you apart from a lot of artists of your generation. Why are you concerned with these big, heavy questions?

 

CRD

Well, I was always very occupied with philosophy. Maybe I have an ‘old brain’. But basically, I think there’s so much you can get from history. As an artist, it’s important to think about what you’re doing. What’s essential to being human? What can I contribute to the ‘network’, the infrastructure and our time? Great thinkers have always understood the importance of art and creativity. I want us to think about eternal principles, and to make us think about the importance of art. Consider every past civilization. What has survived? Art has, and it keeps speaking to us because it’s what we humans have left behind and what we have contributed. I’m not a scientist or a philosopher. That’s not my bag. But I think about a lot of things and try to understand the great thinkers, both the old ones and the new ones today, like Timothy Morton, Satish Kumar, Francesca Ferrando and Rosi Braidotti. They all build on the thought of Plato, who was also seeking a unified understanding of reality.

 

ML

I’d like to ask you about a specific picture, the painting of the yellow shoes (p. 169). There’s something almost cinematic about it. Drama. But it could be set anywhere. It’s a mystery. How did that picture begin?

 

CRD

I actually swiped the image from a fashion magazine. It’s such a mysterious image that I wanted to paint it. The title of the painting is As above, so below, like all the other landscapes. So again, it’s about putting something out there that it’s up to the viewer to make sense of and find an answer to. Perhaps it’s about standing on the verge of the unknown.

 

ML

Colour abounds, but then there’s your black drawings. What was the impetus for that series, and what do you get out of working only with black?

 

CRD

When I first started painting, I was into chakras, and in part I still am, because colours affect us physically and mentally. For some of the blue works in this book, I was inspired by drawings from a mediaeval manuscript coloured with unique hues of blue and green. My charcoal drawings were actually ‘rub-out’ exercises of the kind I learned in art school in Florence. The only difference is that I’m not using oil paint but charcoal on paper. That is, I fill the whole sheet with charcoal, then rub the subject out with an eraser. I love working that way, because it’s so different from painting. You kind of discover the subject in the dark or arrive at it in a unique way.

 

ML

Light and dark is a subject we haven’t touched on yet, though it’s one of the most important ones when working in monochrome formats. Classic art history mentions the ‘picture’s own light’. This is related to the idea that a picture can shine on you. The reason for using gold leaf in mediaeval pictures was that the picture was holy in its own right and directly connected to something spiritual. When you look at the picture, a divine light shines on you. Later, in the realistic tradition, the objects within the picture are illuminated by a light source that’s true to nature. In your black pictures, you seem to be working with a light source within the picture. The picture actually seems to open up in places.

 

CRD

These are thoughts I have definitely become extremely aware of in recent years. For a picture to work, it has to have light. There has to be a completely dark tone, middle tones and light tones. In terms of the composition, it’s about working with all the available possibilities. In the dark pictures, I can let light shine through and be itself.

 

ML

Several of your dark drawings clearly show your inspiration from Odilon Redon. One of his works shows a small, dark plant with a luminous face on its stem. It’s strange and poetic, like a little secret you can discover in a hidden place. For me, all of Redon’s work is suffused with secrets. As a viewer, I feel you get access to something that only the person in front of the picture can know. His work has enormous intimacy. How long have you been fascinated by his art?

 

CRD

Since I was young! But I became reacquainted with Redon a couple of years ago when the Glyptotek did the show Into the Dream (2018). What interests me about his work is how he depicts humanity in nature and the human relationship to nature. I read somewhere that he was friends with a botanist, and I know he studied plants. I too am consumed with nature and science. I’m convinced he read Ovid and was occupied by classical art and theories about the human with nature and the cosmos. He even mentions that he makes shadow people. I’m inspired by the old masters and started working with Ovid 30 years ago. But I’m also inspired by a lot of artists today who have a similar fascination and interest in classical mythology.

 

ML

We’ve discussed your historical role models, but you also engage with many contemporary artists. One, in particular, is Marlene Dumas. I see you have books of her work in your studio. What do you get from her?

 

CRD

Before I was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, I lived in Amsterdam. I found out where Dumas lived, biked over and dropped a letter into her mail slot. Of course, I never heard from her. She’s an amazing painter and she has an amazing language. Like Munch, she’s not afraid to address the big issues of life in her art. She too works with darkness and ugliness. All the things we don’t want to talk about. She’s unique in her painterly language.

 

ML

A really powerful painting by Dumas, The Painter (1994), shows her daughter Helene as a small child, naked with a blood-red hand. The painting lays bare innate human cruelty in a wildly touching and uncanny way. Devoid of illusion, and harsh. It really shows some of your earliest inspiration.

 

CRD

Yes, I’m deeply inspired by her. When I applied to the Academy, I submitted a big painting titled The Family that was inspired by that painting. Dumas is on a par with Rembrandt in my circle of friends when I paint.

 

ML

Why did you become an artist?

 

CRD

That’s a hard question to answer. In a way, it’s random who you meet on your way and what happens. The choices you make along the way. For me, art was a way to express myself in words that weren’t available to me. I’ve said it so many times it feels utterly empty, but I lost my dad very suddenly when I was 13. And with him, I also lost my life with him, because my parents were divorced. He was a clothing designer, amazingly creative and skilled, and when he died, I think I didn’t want his creativity to die with him, so I started doing fashion drawings. Both as a way of keeping my connection to him, but also because I wanted to give life to his passion. When I started art school in Florence at age 19, I met two people, Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky, who were my teachers. They have meant so much to me, and I think they are also a big reason why I became an artist. They remain my mentors today and I stay in close touch with them. They have followed me all the way and know my whole process as a person and an artist. That’s pretty unique, and it gives me a great sense of calm to know they have been with me all the way.

 

Painting is my meditation with reality. When you create something as an artist and show it, you’re responsible for the power it has, and for how it can affect people. I think that’s also a feature of my work. I made it, but I don’t own it. It is just as much the viewer’s work. It’s nice to be able to let things go. I think it’s a driving force for me that I don’t hang on to things, that I dare to evolve and go in new directions. As an artist, you have the power to put something into the world. And that’s an amazing thing.