Reality really IS better

Does it make sense to paint landscapes? Does it make sense to depict nature when the world is a smouldering bonfire of unrest?

The artist Mogens Sjøgård from Lismose near Tullebølle cannot answer his own questions, but he knows that for him – a nature lover who enjoys fishing, running or walking in the very landscapes he chooses to paint – it is worth focusing on the beach and the water, on forests and fields.

For it is, quite literally, love that drives his brush when he paints. “I have to be honest about what I do. But I do feel, perhaps, that landscape painting isn’t all that popular at the moment. At least, that’s what I get the impression from looking round the galleries’ exhibitions,” he says.

The Land Painters

As a member of the artists’ group “The Land Painters” – whose nine members also include his colleagues Keld Nielsen from Kædeby and Camilla West from Taasinge – Mogens Sjøgård acknowledges, however, that the group’s exhibitions at home and abroad are both well-attended and attract an audience with strong purchasing power.

“At one point, I was heading in a slightly different direction – towards something more abstract – because I had this idea of wanting to use the entire picture plane and eliminate the horizon line,” says Mogens Sjøgård.

But you cannot force yourself to do something without it feeling contrived. Among the Land Painters, he could comfortably remain true to the style of painting he grew up with and has lived with. Knud Søgård, Mogens’ late father, was himself a talented landscape painter, and he and his father have seen countless exhibitions of landscape paintings.

Hope versus chaos

For the painting of nature also embodies the hope needed to confront chaos. Perhaps that is why the Danish Golden Age in particular – which emerged from war and bankruptcy – was characterised to such a large extent by paintings of the harmonious Danish landscapes.

“In my line of work, we’re not always very good at talking about our own work. But something that’s always on my mind is to bring out what’s sensed and make it sensory, so that nature is connected to our emotions,” says Mogens Sjøgård, who calls it “Photoshopping” – though it has absolutely nothing to do with image editing on a computer screen.

‘Photoshopping’ can be explained a little like when artists such as Vincent van Gogh make his cornfield or night sky undulate with movement, or when Edvard Munch chooses to let his figures express the sensory experience in the world-famous painting *The Scream*.

But can the Langeland landscape provide enough inspiration for such sensory experiences and a prolonged flirtation with images of nature?

“No!”, says Mogens Sjøgård, whereupon he tentatively tries to recall Dan Turell’s poem “I Love Everyday Life”, which is also about taking a step back and then once again appreciating what one has seen and experienced before.
 

The search for inspiration

“That’s why my wife Line and I often go out – both here in Denmark, for example to the Limfjord and Bornholm, but also to the Faroe Islands to draw fresh inspiration from the distinctive natural surroundings.”

And then, when the painter returns to Langeland, he discovers something he’d never noticed before.

“I was driving around looking for a subject with some good lines and good light, and I found it by the embanked part of Lindelse Nor,” explains Mogens Sjøgård, pointing to a painting in which a dark-brown dirt track leads into a landscape bounded on the left by a fence and, on the right, offering a view across the open countryside with a white gable in the distance.

“Then I come home again to Lismose… and realise that the driveway of the neighbouring farm has the same coveted lines and that lovely light,” he observes. It is, of course, also on the canvas now – though still not finished.

Mogens Sjøgård works outdoors with his camera and sketchbook, whilst the paintings take shape in the studio on the first floor of his home, which overlooks precisely the nature and landscape he loves.

When it comes to purely naturalistic landscape painting, Mogens Sjøgård explains that he chooses to ‘Photoshop’ his work. Not on the computer, but whilst standing with his palette and painting. He prefers a little more colour and a little more contrast in his paintings.

“Because reality simply IS better than the photo you’ve taken!”