ART

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focus on:
Sally Kindberg Camembert

What made you do oil paintings of fifteen different cheeses? I started painting cheese as a side project, while thinking about other ideas. I love cheese, and I eat a lot of cheese, and the more I painted the more I became obsessed because cheese has so many qualities: when I think of cheese I think of texture, reflection, shape, all sorts of things. Cheese has a mysterious quality about it. Each cheese is like a different personality? Yes, and so each of my paintings becomes a portrait. Im actually currently painting a series of characters with interesting hairdos and faces of cheese, but thats a different project. The cheese paintings seem fairly representational, but looking through your website a lot of your work has surreal elements to it. Magritte is definitely one of my favourite artists and he makes a lot of word associations, which I find very interesting, because I do too. I like to play with words and alliterations and the differences between the two languages I speak. Give me an example Its funny, in England when you want people to smile in a portrait you say say cheese. In Swedish the word for cheese is ost which we pronounce oost so if you said say oost to people, their faces would look like bird houses. So we say smile, in English. Are there subconscious elements to your
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work? Bucketloads of them! Im fascinated by the viewer and what connections they make with the work, because every person sees something different. For example some people say my work is dark, but I dont see that, I think of them as funny crazy. I think the darkness is coming from inside the viewer. Do you ever watch people watching your work? Absolutely, and I like to do this incognito. I find their behaviour fascinating, whether they spend ages in front of a painting trying to work it out, or whether they spend ages on someone elses next to mine then pass mine by without giving it a second glance. Whats your favourite cheese? In Sweden we have a cheese called Heer Gards Ost cheese. Its like a hard Swiss cheese. It is important in Sweden to slice such cheese with a cheese slicer. Of the English cheeses my favourite was the Lancashire bomb, which comes in a kind of black casing. I ate it with my father, drinking champagne, it was delicious. Take me to see a painting in a gallery... Id take you straight to the National to see Velazquez Christ in the House of Margaret and Mary. I cant wait until they put a David Shrigley sculpture on the Fouth Plinth. AG
Sallys paintings will be on show in the Tichbourne Gallery from May 3rd

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