I thought it best to start honoring the promises I made in my second blog…

Sorry it took a while - getting this new site up and running was no easy feat, but here it is and I'm ready to start communicating again...

I first need to get back into the groove of things. For me there is no better way to relax than to think about art, artists and the crazy things they end up creating and accomplishing. (We also need to create an introductory ambience for my arty guests who I will introduce to you in the following weeks.)

What I can start off by saying is that art is not paint, charcoal, photography, printing etc. These things are just fun add-ons.

It’s thinking outside the box (a statement you seem to find all over the Hip website!). Looking at a problem and then standing on your head and looking at it again. Then putting on a neon pink leotard and taking another peek – continuously looking from angles you didn’t even think existed…

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? But remember all artists are a bit dotty and it is because of this little spark of maniacal genius that people shot off into space, invented ice-cream and also a sheep called Dolly.

I get the same feeling hearing about Heston Blumenthal concocting food recipes in a laboratory (you heard right, no kitchen needed – it’s far too ‘old school’ for this molecular gastronomist) as I get looking at a beautiful Picasso painting, or reading Philip Pullman (you guys should definitely give him a try. He writes about other worlds, quantum physics, armoured bears, witches and daemons – your soul in the visible form of an animal).

This feeling for me is art and to put it in words is to spoil it. Let me rather describe it (and end off this blog) with the wise words of Claes Oldenburg:

“I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.

I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself…”