Jasper Sebastian Stürup

kunstmagasinet Janus. Jasper Sebastian Stürup March. 2022

The drawing is always changing!
A little about my practice.

Everything I do comes from drawing; it is the backbone of my work, whether it translates into drawing, sculpture, painting or prints.

In my work, I have always been sensitive to everything that surrounds me. When I lived in New York (2005–2013), it was the party, the speed, and in every way a wonderful art overdose from the city that was the core. I drew delicately and very precisely with intricate flowing compositions, dreamlike accumulations, approaching the magic. The motifs arrived from all sorts of places, I borrowed small pieces here and there, collected them and made them mine.

During the last two years, turning more inward, I have increased a focus I was already developing, working with what is physically in front of me: life at home, the generally recognizable, as a visit to a café or a restaurant, walks on the ramparts surrounding Christiania, where the year is present in a way that the city does not otherwise offer, right now with enticing naked trees and bird life. In one way it becomes smaller, but at the same time it opens up a world of new motifs regarding the near and the imaginative, which I approach both in a classic and contemporary sense. Among other things, I draw quite a few portraits of my wife Savannah, as well as self-portraits.

Where the motif has now become calmer, the drawing has become wilder, and dirtier; an extension of the last years’ paintings where I work with oil pastel and oil stick on satin and canvas. I have replaced the thin neat line with charcoal and dry pastel, which is sometimes drawn directly in wet watercolor. It's hard to control, it's messy in wonderfully erratic ways with the material's built-in chaos, it cracks, breaks, and dust and stains occur.