11/20/2023 0 Comments Simon stalenhagI can’t find much in the way of Stålenhag’s professional work, but there lots of his personal pieces from this series on his website, along with a number of detail crops that show to advantage his digital painting style. Stålenhag mentions his early inspiration for pursuing concept art in seeing the work of industry greats Syd Mead and Ralph McQuarrie. There is an interview with Stålenhag on Abduzeedo that delves a bit into his process. Stålenhag artfully uses his digital tools to achieve a look similar to gouache, with its characteristic matte finish, but with lots of painterly touches (putting me in mind of some of the earliest images I saw back in the mid-90s that impressed me with the potential of digital painting: the “digital gouache” paintings of Nancy Stahl). What struck me, aside from my usual fondness for sci-fi themed concept art and dinosaurs, was the wonderful painterly quality Stålenhag has achieved in his digital paintings, along with his beautifully naturalistic evocation of the Swedish landscape against which his imaginings are set. There is now something of a backstory, created after the fact, that you can read in a brief English translation as part of this article from Wired. The images portray somewhat dystopian times involving futuristic machinery, slightly retro vehicles and suggestions of gleaming cities… and, oh yes, dinosaurs. My art may not be of an epic scale, rivalling myths of old, but they’re just as important.For several years Swedish concept artist and illustrator Simon Stålenhag has been working on a series of digital images that, though initially just fanciful works done for practice or his own amusement, gradually evolved a common theme. I now look at the world and imagine what could be, or what could have been. Whatever the case, Stålenhag’s art affected me in ways I likely will not understand for a long time, if ever. Maybe I just really like the art style and think it’s cool. Maybe it was a perfect storm of trying to discover my identity, my desire for escapism, wondering and hoping for hope in a world I thought was utterly devoid of it. I often wonder about what drew me to Stålenhag’s art. Our small stories, our experiences, triumphs and falls, are just as important. The world may be complicated, beyond understanding, but those connections we form with others matter. In looking at Stålenhag’s art, it’s almost calming. Being bipolar, I often view myself thinking in blacks and whites: things will either turn out great, or we will face oblivion. I think his art also paints a picture of worlds that are not dystopias or utopias, but something different. Not everything had to be a matter of life and death. My photos could tell small stories, ones that most people could relate to and experience. I thought my art always had to have some profound message, that my photographs had to exist on an epic scale. Oftentimes I reached far higher than I could ever accomplish, and in doing so hundreds of projects of mine were left unfinished. Seeing his artwork, and the ideas behind it made me think of my own art. The world was one that felt lived in, one that seemed real. Family drama, exploring the town you live in and falling in and out of love. The stories in the book told not of world-ending events or epic quests, but of growing up. Some of the drawings were of robots walking nearby a family home, others were of a strange sort of craft, floating at a docking station. I wanted to see more, see what he had made, and ended up buying his book, “Tales from the Loop.” In the pages was the story of a small Swedish town, and the experimental research facility that ran underneath. I loved his art, and I wanted mine to depict the same mix of emotion. Maybe it was the mix of old, 90s era tech with something that seemed so futuristic, maybe it was the grand yet small scale of it. The first drawing depicted a man, carrying a computer home, while a large floating craft hovered far away from him. I found his work many years ago, in a Tumblr post that has almost certainly been lost to time. That is what I see when I look at the works of Simon Stålenhag. It’s fascinating to think of a world that could have been, one that never existed, but could have. It’s an interesting feeling, a mix of hopefulness, intrigue and in some cases, dread. I’m not quite sure if there’s a word for being nostalgic of a past that never existed. Written by Emma Roberts, Images sourced from Simon & Schuster
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