Rolf Groven, political painter

"Children of Abraham, 2003"

I'm a big fan of Rolf Groven.
He makes his fine art a political demonstration against unfairness in the world, it be war, pollution or just "day-to day" politics.
Many of his works has been rejected at exhibitions because of their strong, raw motives.

He has been an active painter for over 30 decades now and is still provoking the Norwegian political elite and its followers.

He does something we should see more in fine arts, using his artistic abilities to wake up the people from ignorance and dullness!




This painting is from 1971 and is inspired by the painting of Rafael with the same name; "The Sistine Madonna".
The motif is a mother and her son hit by the American napalm bombing under the Vietnam war. Groven's question was how a nation with such a strong, Christian belief could execute so much pain agains civilians in a country that had never done the USA anything! (Luckily there were a lot of people inside the USA that demonstrated against the war, but these are never the people in power, unfortunately...)

More info about Rolf Groven

Tattoos

I'm a big fan of tattoos. I got my first one when I was 15, something my mother still can't get over that I did. These days it has become more and more normal to see people with tattoos, and the prejudice is not so large anymore, it seems like it actually is becoming more of a norm to have one than not.

My tattoos:

Lines

I usually draw with pencil first, then colored pencils or water color and then finish with a black ink outline. The motifs are pretty absurd most of the times and you can interpret them however you like.

Dragons

My fascinations for dragons are enormous!
It has to be the remnants from my childhood devotion to dinosaurs. I used to collect plastic toy dinosaurs, sticker-books and pictures from National Geographics, and knew the names like Triceratops, Diplodochus, T-Rex and Iguanadon. I could tell my kinder-garden colleagues about the three time periods of the dinosaur era, the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
Then in high school I started to read the sequels "Dragonlance" and the "Pern" sequels , and my own world of colorful dragons were born.
Mythical creatures, elegant, strong, magical and soaring the sky fearless and playful.

At last the sun is shining
the clouds of blue roll by
with flames from the dragon of darkness
the sunlight blinds his eyes.
-Battle of Evermore by Led Zeppelin

Boring lecture

Ever wondered how to stay awake when the professor's voice is lulling you to sleep and you wish to be anywhere but in a class room or lecture hall?
Draw!

Here are some drawings that came into existence this way.