This film shows the making of the oil painting called: "Circus Nights" (oil on canvas), by Tor-Arne Moen. It was painted in March/April 2015 and measures 200x350 cm. The model is Martine Grette.

***

The film was made by the artist himself, and is an "artist in studio" production showing the process of a large oil painting.

The painting depicts a huge lion watching closely as a woman in a green dress is holding a hula hoop, in what seems like an an intent to tame a shoal of fish, swimming in the air through the room.
Although Moen has claimed that "the motif is just an excuse to paint", his paintings leaves the spectator with space to interpret, and are often highly imaginative and with stories to tell.

***

Tor-Arne Moen (1966) is a Norwegian painter, printmaker and author. He lives and works in Notodden (Telemark), Norway. He was educated at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts (1988-94).

The artist is recognizable by his high-powered figurative technique with heavily painted surfaces consisting of coarse and thick brushstrokes made with varying brush widths, in layer upon layer. He uses a mix of oil-paint and egg-oil tempera, an old technique based on an emulsifying binder. Emulsion is a mixture of two substances which initially cannot be mixed, in this case oil and water. The egg is added as the emulsifier, which allows oil and water to mix. The word tempera refers to the actual painting technique and was used by the masters since Medieval times. While the tempera is often applied in thin layers, Moen uses it with oil-paint, and in generous amounts, in order to get the creamy texture, and set the brushstrokes in relief to the canvas.

Moen had his breakthrough with a series of paintings for Hamsun’s collected works in the early 90s and continued with a series of expressively painted motorcycles. Throughout the last 25 years he has worked through a wide range of different approaches to the medium and has gone through most classical, figurative disciplines, with motifs such as portraits, landscapes, urban landscapes, burlesque and imaginative, more or less surreal constellations between animals and human figure. In short, most of what he has found visually interesting.

Moen usually works in series over a topic that can occupy him for several years, before changing his theme and style, seeking new angles into his painterly excavations.

For two periods, from 2004 to 2012 and from 2017 onwards, he has worked with a nostalgic approach to the painting based on old black and white family-album photographs as motive basis and support for the eye. Here, the viewer immediately recognizes the photographic reference to a certain time and a certain type of photography, while experiencing the painterly addition of coats and colors in bold, often expressionist brushstrokes. «In front of his painting», an art critic once said, – «I often get the urge to press my nose against its surface to smell it, and maybe even taste it».

The broad-brushed realism and oily, almost juicy surfaces becomes an important source of distance from the photographic art.

Even though the references and the narrative in these paintings have a retrospective character, the spectator is forced to realize that the images are made in our present time, and seen with the eyes, -and nostalgia of our time.

Tor-Arne Moen is represented by many renowned galleries all over Norway and by RJD Gallery in the USA. His works are acquired by art collectors both nationally and internationally.

(Comment in English by Galleri Grette)