Volkvard

Written By Contemporary Art Collectors

My early years as a visual artist Apart from drawing a lot in my childhood and early ears, I started my activities as a visual artist more than 30 years ago
It took me about 10 years to reach a level where I felt ready to exhibit my paintings. Over the next two decades or so, I exhibited in private regional or company-based private art associations in my country Denmark only.
At the age of 63, I chose to retire early to devote myself to my passion for performing visual arts. It was now time to explore the interest in my art among a more internationally oriented audience.
I chose an experimental style early on, as I rarely deal with the same motif. I find inspiration and joy in working with our human emotional universe, especially social emotions.
In my previous work within trauma-focused therapy, it fascinated me how differently, we as individuals feel and experience the same social situations. This also applies to looking at paintings.It is, as if visual arts have a direct access to our social learnings – even the learnings that we are not aware of. These different learnings very often cause us to experience the same work of art completely differently.
The later years For me it was really liberating to learn that any experience of art is strictly personal and cannot be democratised into common aesthetics or rules. Since I could only vaguely guess what exactly my viewers experienced, I had to give myself full freedom to paint what I personally felt passionate about – sometimes not knowing the origin of my own passions.

Jorgen, your life has been shaped by two profound disciplines: science and art. For decades, you navigated the rigor of empirical research and clinical practice, while quietly nurturing a parallel world of painterly expression. How has your scientific mindset its methods, disciplines, and philosophical inquiries shaped the way you approach a blank canvas? Do you find that scientific thinking imposes structure on your process, or does it act as a counterpoint to the intuitive freedom of your visual language?

For many people science and art seem to be very opposite worlds, but this is both true and false depending on the setting and perspective. I will try to give some examples of this. Many people would be surprised to learn how many major discoveries were caused by scientific experiments that went wrong. One such example is the discovery of the first antibiotic (Penicillin, by Alexander Fleming in 1928). When a scientist plans an experiment, it is done to learn from nature in areas where we lack knowledge. Such scientists are trying to navigate in a world where there may be more we don’t know than what we do know. On this “fluffy” frontier of science, our creativity is necessary to “fill out the blanks” when planning an experiment. A good scientist needs to be open-minded, intuitive, creative, and humble, but at the same time also plan experiments with rigor so that the experiment can answer well-defined questions. It is therefore a dance between convergent (structured) and divergent (creative/intuitive) thinking.

The work as an artist is not just creativity and divergent thinking. You also need to master the basic craft, such as mixing colors, managing composition, brush strokes, etc. It is said that any artistic virtuosic performance requires a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice to achieve such skill.

In my early years I often experienced that a promising painting “collapsed” in my hands because I did not know when to stop correcting and modifying it. The early stages had a promising expression, but when I tried to make it more “perfect,” this initial expression was suddenly gone. Then I changed my approach and started 5 or 6 canvases simultaneously, working in parallel with them all to allow myself to experiment more freely, trying out different expressions of the same theme. That helped. Most often, however, I discarded all but 1–2 canvases in the end. In later years I worked a lot with computer-based sketches and themes, because here I could more easily “undo” a range of steps. I do, however, still make many variants and in most cases there is only one “winner,” which I then transform into a painting. This may sound easy, but it always results in many unexpected effects, because the PC screen is “transparent” and distorts the colors when they are transferred to the canvas. So a lot of iterations, experimentation and changes are still needed, especially with the colors and color balances.

So to conclude this important question: making art is also a dance between convergent and divergent thinking. Each artwork is partially a journey into the unknown. I always feel some unrest until the day comes when I suddenly see that the effort has somehow materialized my original feeling and vision for the theme.

You’ve described your work as an exploration of emotional “fascinations” deeply felt, often hidden social and psychological experiences that live in the periphery of our conscious selves. Could you speak to how you identify these fascinations? What makes one worthy of artistic expression while another remains archived, and how do you decide when a theme has matured enough to move from inner sketch to final artwork?

I have for quite some years built a collection of “fascinations” in the form of sketches, photos, or situations from my own life or from the experiences of my clients. Sometimes I am very conscious of why they moved me, but I often do not know exactly why. It does not matter if I know why. The feeling or intuition is enough for me. I have learned to be humble and trust my intuition. These “themes” are then stored and from time to time I look at them again. New emotional aspects may appear, which I also save. I have themes from more than 15 years in my inventory, and it may take years before they are materialized into a painting, or they may never materialize. There is a kind of intuitive competition between the themes, subject to my “spirit of the day.”

You have made the powerful assertion that “art is not a democratic process” and that the value of a painting exists only in the eye and mind of the beholder. In a time when public opinion, algorithms, and curatorial trends often shape perception, how do you defend the sovereignty of personal interpretation in art? What responsibilities, if any, do you feel toward collective taste, and how do you maintain your integrity as an artist amid external pressures for consensus?

To me there is no doubt that people often have very different emotions when they look at the same painting. I proved this fact early in my artistic career where I made written questionnaires, which I distributed to my viewers to find out if there was a general overarching artistic “standard.” Instead I found out – to my big surprise – that people did not at all agree about the “value” of my paintings. Some people could hate the same picture that others loved and vice versa. Later I expanded my “investigation” by interviewing people about what they felt when looking at the same painting in separate one-to-one interviews. On top of that, they told very different stories about why they felt as they did. My homepage (www.volkvard.com) has a separate section with an example of three videos showing three different people watching the very same painting.

This does not at all render curators unemployed. On the contrary. What most curators already know is that their job is to find the specific audience for every single artwork. This is a much more demanding task. Having said that, it is also important to know that some buyers may be looking more for a painting that fits their furniture. Here we are – in my view – talking more about “decorations” and fashion. Also here it is worth knowing which kind of “art” a specific collector is looking for. Let us embrace the diversity of the visual artists, the curators, and the customers.

Many of your works confront emotionally charged or ethically complex themes, from subtle psychological ambiguities to overtly provocative subjects such as child harassment and mortality. When working with content of this gravity, how do you navigate the line between emotional truth and ethical sensitivity? What considerations guide your decision to render such subjects visually, and how do you prepare your audience or yourself for the vulnerability that follows?

To answer this question, I think it is wise to look a little at other arts such as films, literature, and music. Many people feel attracted to watch films and read literature including themes with humiliations, violence and death, and many people love to read crime-related fiction including the same topics. Other people dislike it, and some are indifferent. These people all have the freedom to choose. I think we can agree that a lot of people experience value in dealing with such “sensitive topics.” This is part of our human psyche – we may be attracted to deal with themes we fear in a comfortable setting. In a therapeutic setting this may even have a healing effect.

As with any other kind of art mentioned above, people have a choice in what to perceive as art, whether provocative or not. The public “secret” here is that people are not sensitive because of the artwork itself. They were already sensitive before they engaged with the specific artwork. This is in my view the classical dilemma: shall I criticize the messenger who provided the provocative ”art message” I do not want to be confronted with, or shall I acknowledge that the sensitivity was in me all the time? Shall I accept this sensitivity or alternatively seek therapeutic help for it – if it is too high? After all, a painting is only a surface with some shapes and colors. The inspiration and emotions are always created in the viewer’s mind.

You describe yourself not as a storyteller, but as a catalyser an artist who aims to ignite the viewer’s own emotional response rather than impose a narrative. In this respect, your work seems to straddle the border between art and therapy. Do you see your artistic practice as a form of healing, either for yourself or your audience? And if so, where do you draw the line between catharsis and self-exposure, between transformation and aesthetic distance?

Yes, I see myself as a catalyzer of the viewer’s own emotional response, and the reason why I do not try to impose a narrative is primarily because I have discovered that this is largely impossible. People have very different narratives and learnings in life caused by the interplay between our emotional differences and our intellectual processing of these differences. Regarding your hypothesis that I seem to straddle between art and therapy, I do not expect my paintings to have a major therapeutic effect. I do, however, know from my own therapeutic work that pictures and paintings may be used diagnostically by the therapist to discuss the client’s emotions and in this way get an impression of which emotions can be consciously expressed or are actively suppressed by the client. Also the strength of the emotional reaction and the narrative associated with the specific reaction are of potential diagnostic value.

Regarding catharsis, this was described long ago by Aristotle (approx. 300 years before Christ). This is the positive after-effect on people after viewing a theatrical play including a tragedy. I think this is very parallel to what we see today with the above-mentioned horror movies and crime novels including murder, death and social humiliations. Many humans have a need to deal with such disasters in a “third person theatrical setting” to air out some of their own fear, so even in the ancient Greek setting this positive effect was already known. This positive effect should not be confused with therapy, because the people who have pathological fear and/or anxiety have a strong urge to actively avoid this kind of artistic exposure. This is because such exposure may precipitate anxiety related to traumatic events in the past they do not remember (because they are actively suppressing them). Such strong reactions require therapeutic intervention.

Over the years, you’ve collected more than 150 recurring emotional fascinations that appear to resonate across individual experience. Do you organize these intuitively, or is there a deeper philosophical or psychological architecture that informs how you understand these patterns? How do you ensure that your engagement with these themes remains open and alive, rather than becoming codified or illustrative?

As mentioned earlier, I have learned to be humble because I cannot predict how individual people will react to specific artworks. The “fascinations” were initially very much linked to my own intuition and the underlying cause of my fascination was largely hidden to myself. When I later started to work with trauma-focused therapy I expanded my pool of “fascinations” to also include a broader emotional palette related to client experiences, their mental life stories and narratives. This has been a rich source of artistic inspiration. This was also how I learned that visual arts are vastly under-represented with genuine human emotional expressions. There seems to be a collective deception that humans are primarily driven by their intellect. When you dig deep into personal life stories, emotions, and the associated narratives you find out that the human mind works differently. Humans are primarily driven by their emotions rather than their intellect in their important social life. Later they then construct an intellectual narrative that fits with their emotional decisions. The biggest deception of our time is that we are primarily intellectual beings.

This is also mirrored in the art world dealing with paintings. There seems to be a trend where emotional content is either absent or artistically blurred and subdued. This is in stark contrast to, for example, films, novels and operas, which are filled with strong emotional content. As an artist it is my intention to try to fill this gap.

Whether an artwork becomes open and alive can only be decided by the viewer. Also here art is not democratic. As an artist I need to find the audience that finds my artworks “emotionally alive,” so you may also say that my audience needs to find me and my art.

Having exhibited internationally while remaining deeply connected to your roots in Denmark, how do you experience the contrast between local and global emotional vocabularies? Do you find that viewers from different cultures respond differently to the same painting, and if so, what has this taught you about the universality or specificity of human emotional perception?

Denmark is a small country with only 6 million people and I have only in recent years received reactions from people outside Denmark. Today I have my original paintings on the Singulart platform. Here I have observed the same diversity in preferences as in Denmark. It is still too early to make any firm conclusions, but there has been a trend – also based on the international prizes I have been awarded – that Italy, Spain, and some South American countries may have a slightly higher preference.

Throughout your career, you have encountered viewers whose interpretations of your paintings radically diverged from your own intentions. Has there been a particular instance where a viewer’s insight revealed something unexpected or even uncomfortable about your own work? Can you recall a moment when you saw your own painting anew through someone else’s eyes?

You ask me here if there have been particular instances where something unexpected was revealed? The general experience is that people’s reactions are surprising and unexpected. So the answer is yes. The general learning is further that I cannot and should not try to figure out how people will react to my paintings. The human psyche is so much more diverse than I ever anticipated. Today I am still stunned how visual media (art, photos etc.) have direct access to our “shadow personality” – the part of our psyche that we hide from ourselves. Is this uncomfortable? I do not think so, but maybe I am not the right person to ask this question.

Your transition from a semi-professional artist to a full-time painter came later in life, after decades of contributing to the scientific community. Has this shift in vocation altered your sense of artistic risk or purpose? Do you now feel more liberated or more accountable, knowing that your art is no longer a private sanctuary but a full-time public practice?

Yes, it has altered my sense of risk and purpose. The first factor is that I am now economically independent. I have money enough for the rest of my life, so I do not need to sell anything to survive. That gives me the ultimate artistic freedom that all artists should ideally have. The second factor is that I now perceive myself and my painting more as a “cultural project” than an ego-centered project aiming at fame and recognition. If I can contribute to a better understanding of how our human mind works, I will be happy with my achievements. As mentioned above, most people in the western world are under the deception that humans – as opposed to animals – are primarily intellectual beings. This is not true. We are still animals and many of our most important decisions are still provoked by our emotional life – especially in the social domain.

In your reflections, you challenge the widespread belief that human beings are primarily rational creatures, arguing instead for the primacy of emotion. Yet much of the art world still privileges intellectual frameworks, academic theory, and conceptual language. How do you see your role within this system  as a challenger, a bridge, or an outsider? What would an art institution look like if it were truly built around emotional intelligence rather than intellectual critique?

I would say I do not represent any of the alternatives you mention (challenger, bridge, outsider). I more consider myself as the child in the fairy tale of the Danish author H.C. Andersen called “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” This little novel conveys the familiar theme where the fear of stepping outside the social conventions is so great that the adults do not speak out in the trickster's game. A child sees what he sees and says so, and then suddenly everybody can see that the emperor is naked. The novel has several moral points, but the primary one is about the importance of telling the truth, even when it is difficult or uncomfortable. The tale also criticizes hypocrisy, the arrogance of power, and the dangers of conformity.

What would an art institution look like if it were built around emotional intelligence? I think we already see a lot of trends in society that show us the way:

a. Many curators who serve customers already know that art customers do not want to be told which artworks they should like. The ideal curator is the one that acts more like a coach for the collector, helping to find the artwork that he or she can connect with emotionally.

b. Social media already helps people to find those who share their views and emotions. Another way of saying this is that it helps people find their own “echo-chamber.”

c. Many commercial online platforms operate by subdividing customers into manageable subgroups based on their individual differences in taste. These algorithms are nowadays improved by artificial intelligence. It is very easy to extend this to help people identify different types of emotional art (or any art) because we can make meaningful subcategories of similar emotional preferences. This will all support the important work of the curator: to make it easy for collectors and artists to identify each other.

d. In order for individual art collectors to use the facilities of the art institution, they first need to go through a preference questionnaire which has to include the rating of a range of artworks with different emotional expressions. It also has to include different variants of non-figurative art, non-emotional art, and purely decorative art, etc., to ensure the broadest possible diversity of the art world. Also, there needs to be an option to sign up for several subgroups in case this is relevant for the single art collector.

Contemporary Art Collectors
Next

Daniel McKinley