PhotoTalks: Irene Vidal [Illustrator and Creative Advertiser]

Photo shooting and interviewing a Spanish diva, Irene Vidal, who happened to live in Copenhagen.

What brought you to Denmark?
I had always wanted to have an international experience. I visited Copenhagen two years ago, and it really shocked me. I felt that the city was completely different from others, and I loved many of its values, like its relaxed atmosphere and green areas, ubiquitous Nordic design, the fact that bikes are prioritize over cars, and the way how Danish enjoy their free time... Last summer I had the feeling that I have to go back to discover more about this culture. And then an opportunity came and I moved here.



When did you start drawing?
Like most of us, I started drawing when I was child and went to school. I used to design characters with quirky clothes and create short graphic stories that began with a simple dot. Some of these drawings are awful, haha.... :), but I still keep them.

However, I had stopped drawing for several years because I was very busy working and felt that I had no time for this minor thing. Eventually, I returned to it. It is my “happiness therapy”. Illustration relaxes me, makes me happy and makes me listening to myself... and these are not minor things. So now, I try to save some daily time to draw. Simply said drawing means to me the same as for example practising yoga or watching football means to other people.



What are you currently working on? Any interesting project?
I have different projects in mind. I moved from Barcelona to Copenhagen few months ago, so I am experiencing all sort of situations. New places, new people, new weather, new culture and so on. I feel like I am turning this into visual stuff, such as illustrations, collages, and digital designs. These days, I am playing with different type of materials, pencils, watercolours... My after summer goal is to leave my comfort area, get my hands dirty and see how far I can go with new techniques.

Where does your creative inspiration come from?
Inspiration can come to you, but many times you must go out to look for it. I have noticed that inspiration is coming to me when I make changes in my life. With changes I mean both things like finding a new working space in a new good café where you can enjoy endless breakfasts, discovering a park, or experiencing more transcendental feelings like newness, unexpectedness, the sense of danger... These experience make me sit at the table and draw for hours. I also find children really inspiring, especially, their innocence and creativity and the way how they express themselves and how they move.

PhotoTalks: Gitte Valentiner-Branth [Painter]

Gitte Valentiner-Branth is a Danish artist living just few kilometres from the City of Copenhagen, in Gentofte, and creating ART WITH ATTITUDE.

I saw her works on the collective exhibition Byens Lys in March this year for the first time. She exhibited three softly grey and pinkish, a bit geometrical and a bit surreal paintings. I spent long minutes exploring carefully these images enjoying Gitte's play with different perspectives and slowly digesting her unique way of capturing difference between cities and the nature. I felt like this artist has a lot to say and wished to meet her in person.






So I was very happy and excited when Gitte agreed on a interview. Drinking green tea in her colourful apartment/art studio, I asked her few questions:

When did you start painting?
I started to paint approximately 7 years ago. I've been drawing since I was young. When I went to school I drew every day. I have always loved colours, always been very attracted to paintings, home decoration, styling, design, art and so on... I had a coach lesson many years ago where I told my coach how much I want to make my own art painting and she said: "So get started!” So I did, and I have done it ever since. It is such at big part of me and my life and I cannot live without.



What are you currently working on?
Currently, I am working on a small series called " Large and small accidents for practitioners". It will be five small artworks in a limited number of soft colours.



What inspires you to paint/draw?
I get inspired everywhere – on the street, in the nature. Buildings, colours, patterns, fashion and design inspire me too. I also think a lot about the environment, the earth, the climate, animals and about the contrast between nature and our hi-tech way of life.  

Thank you for the interview, Gitte.

PhotoTalks: OJAM [Painter]

Dreamy landscapes, subtle figures and colour contrast are three things that come to mind when I think about the French painter OJAM OJAM. She has been living in Copenhagen more than ten years. She's always busy - working for a Scandinavian company, travelling, and taking care of her children, yet she's full of elan and creative ideas. It's amazing, how much energy you can feel from her pictures.

When did you start painting, Martine?

I have always liked carpentry and wood carving and I started when I was really young in a creative and not always constructive manner!
In Sweden in the early 2000, I went to 'Upplands Väsby Möbelsnickarskolan' (woodworking school of Upplands Vasby, Sweden) and enjoyed woodworking as much as designing the pieces. A lot of my home furniture results from this activity. After moving to Denmark in 2003, I continued to design some pieces and explored the design aspect further, which I then developed into drawing and painting activities; it was also easier than woodworking activity and equipment when living in an apartment in town.
I very much enjoyed this new interest, which I keep exploring.

What are you currently working on?

I always enjoyed painting in an abstract realism with a restricted colour palette. Today I am investigating this further with a grey-black colour palette, where I am trying to extract real atmosphere, using the essence of the light effect.
Simultaneously I am also working on pencil drawings based on classic sculptures in the Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen. With this I am hoping to better integrate people into my city atmosphere paintings. Today I just finished an exhibition in Helligåndshuset, Copenhagen from which I got very interesting feedback, and I am currently experimenting new paintings and technics before planning for a next exhibition event.

What inspires you?

I very much like to paint atmosphere, or life experience ambiance, mostly based on real situations. My kids are also a very rich source of inspiration, either from a common situation we experienced or by enjoying the act of painting together, their feedback and participation is always welcome and contributes a lot to my painting. We enjoy traveling together, and these common cultural, architectural, and sporting experiences form an endless base for creativity.
I was fortunate enough over the last ten years to meet excellent painters and teachers such as Karin Court-Payen, Vladimir Voronin, Laurent Auer, and Håkan Nystrom. They have helped broaden my technique and further developed my enthusiasm for painting and drawing.

Thank you for the interview.

PhotoTalks: David Noel Bourke [Filmmaker]

Summer calls for a new interview! I met David Noel Bourke and I had a really nice chat with him about a life and film culture in Denmark. And I decided to introduce him to you.



David is an independent filmmaker from Ireland who moved to Denmark twelve years ago. He has been living with his Danish wife in Valby. He has written and directed the two feature films Last Exit (2003) and No Right Turn (2009).

David, what are you currently working on?
I'm excited to be working on a new Nordic Noir feature film called WHITE PIG. It's a thriller, the story is a metaphor about Danes and their foreign friends, sometimes not so nice and how all of us can learn from this!

'White pig' is going to be a very first crowd funded film produced in Denmark. Why do you decided to finance it this way?
I have been writing for a few years since the launch of my previous film "No Right Turn", so I needed to start shooting something. Crowdfunding seemed like a perfect opportunity to share the film with the public and gather some funding support to help us get started.
Help us make it happen HERE, 7 days to go :-)



What motivates and inspires you?
Open minded people. Folk who dare to be different. Of course good movies, good books and travel!

Thank you for the interview!

PhotoTalks: Stisa Søgaard [Dancer and Choreographer]

I met Stisa Søgaard for a photo session in November. Stisa is a Danish dancer and choreographer, who also enjoys anthropology and African culture.

At the beginning, we started with a long discussion about the best location to meet and take pictures in. We agreed on some raw place. We both liked the idea of monochromatic, a bit organic, and a bit of an industrial place.

Eventually, we found an amazingly creative place close to Sydhavn. There stood many old battered containers and workshops that were contrast against the brown trees, their yellow leaves, and to Stisa who was wearing colourful dresses.

I hope you will like our autumnal pictures ;-)



Stisa, I have seen your last dance performance, Klangkörper. Could you tell me more about it?
The idea behind the performance, ‘Klangkörper’, came from the artist, Berit Dröse and her sister, Viola Dröse, who is a modern dancer and who I work with in the dance company, Panisk Organisk. I cooperated with the two sisters in order to develop and transform the idea into dance.

The performance is about sound and how sound affects people physically and psychologically in the every day. We hear sound through the brain and the skin. Music therapists and sound masseurs use sound to balance our psychological wellbeing. Sound is around us in the everyday and it affects us unconsciously. Sound is a big part of our perception of the world. We therefore find it interesting and necessary to shed light on the impact of sound!

The German word “Klangkörper” is the body of a string instrument. Therefore it is the body of sound. In the performance we worked together with a sound artist, who works with recording sounds of silence. To him sound is everywhere and in everything –even in silence. He plays his sound live in the performance.





Are you currently working on anything new? When and where is your next dance performance?
Right now I am working on a children's performance. My interest in this has grown in the past year as I've seen my own daughter grow, and her interest in movement and theatrical games grow with her. Therefore we are working on interactive play, where the children will be part of an imaginary dream world. The performance will take place in kindergartens in the first place and afterwards we will see where it can lead us. Also I am in a process of making a children's book in corporation with a photographer, and Viola Dröse from the dance company Panisk Organisk.

Also, I am now working together with an old friend of mine, who is a theatre instructor. We want to make a theatrical dance performance about how we perceive the world we live in and how the way we perceive the world controls our ways of acting. It is just in its infant stage, so we have not yet decided with who or when and where!





Where does your creative inspiration come from?
My creative inspiration derives from the everyday. I do not seek inspiration. Inspiration is around me all the time. Sometimes I get it from movements I see in a special setting –it could be from a walk in the park or a football match. It can inspire me to a topic to work with or just a movement frame, which has to go through a process where it evolves and becomes something else. It could be the movement shape itself, the force of which it is performed or the feelings behind the movement. I can also get inspired from a situation I witness, where a topic is discussed or maybe how it is being discussed. Often I get inspired from texts on a specific topic in the newspaper or an interesting quotation, for instance. This then gives me a picture of a scene that I would like to develop.

I also like to get inspired by other artworks, here I philosophize about the concepts, the structure or the material the art piece is made of, and then I am inspired to form them into movements and stories.

Thank you for the interview!



More pictures from the photo session HERE!

PhotoTalks: Maylen Rusti [Singer and Songwriter]

I had a photo session with the Norwegian singer and songwriter Maylen Rusti, who currently lives in Copenhagen. We met in one of my favourite parks in Østerbro to take pictures there. I was a bit worried about the weather. 'Cause, you know, you can't trust Danish weather. It changes twenty times a day.

Eventually all went well. It wasn't raining. We relaxed and enjoyed an unusually sunny afternoon and a beautiful autumn scene. I was curious about Maylen's professional life, so I asked her a few questions during our photo shoot.



Maylen, what are you currently working on? Any interesting projects?
I'm currently working on getting the last details in place for the release of my first album. The release is set to be in January '13, but the release dates are yet to be announced. Other than that I'm spending some time in my home studio working on new material for some upcoming recordings, as well as booking gigs for the next semester. Right now, I'm also waiting for my second music video to be ready for launching, which it will be in just a couple of days.

What does your normal day look like?
A normal day for me could start with waking up early to work three hours in the library, then going home to eat lunch, drink coffee and then I get ready to work with my music. In some cases, working with my music means sitting in front of my computer for hours, writing e-mails and applications for funding for different projects. The best days are, of course, when I've made some new music that I really like. Nowadays it motivates me a lot when I get quick (and positive) answers to my e-mails, or when I get good feedback on my new material.



What inspires you to compose music and write lyrics?
The thing that inspires me the most for writing music is when I hear music that I like and find interesting, or when I'm able to take the time to really enjoy my everyday life. It's the times when I stop to think about how I'm feeling, and why, that there comes some interesting ideas for new songs. In this case I get really motivated and inspired, whether the feelings are good or bad, 'cause it all makes sense in music (smiling).

When and where is your next concert?
I'm playing one concert on 9th of November in Bergen in Norway. And then I have two concerts in January. The first one is on 5th at Mono in Oslo, and other is on 31st at Studenterhuset i København. You can find details about my upcoming shows on my new web page. :)

Thank you for the interview, Maylen!
You're welcome!