4/19/2023 0 Comments Simon stalenhag![]() When I started drawing people, I had a backstory for each of them-mundane, boring stuff. There is a sci-fi aspect to your art but also a feeling of everyday life unfolding. I try and make it look like an actual physical thing that works. When I do it, the picture is the final piece in itself. When you do concept art for film, the main focus is to convey the design of the thing, not to make a pretty picture. Well, (McQuarrie) mostly did concept art for movies. You cited Ralph McQuarrie and Syd Mead as early influences. Then suddenly you have a surreal landscape. To use the pictures of the landscape and extend them, to find things that complement the landscape. I think that’s the reason I started doing science fiction, because I am adding stuff, I am adding things to the conversation that wouldn’t be there. You once described your style as “trying to find mechanical designs that fit the rhythm of the landscape". If there’s a big freeway and it’s deserted, you know there’s a consequence to it. Of course, in real life, it’s much more scary, because it has implications. So right now it’s just a weird coincidence. When I started I painted tranquil landscapes, almost like a meditation. My pictures are a way of creating a setting that’s relaxing. I have always preferred being by myself, I have never liked being in crowds. My pictures are often of the countryside and there are not many people there. Some parts of the world under lockdown are starting to look like your art-landscapes with solitary figures. If you want to hang out, you can-but people are responsible. The lockdown here is more of a recommendation. I don’t go into town as much as usual now. I live out in the countryside and I work from home normally, so for me it hasn’t been much of a change. Well, my routine is already very isolated. Stålenhag’s art books, the inspiration for a new Amazon series, seem to predict a world in isolation, battling mysterious forces I caught up with the artist, who lives in the countryside not far from Stockholm, over the phone and asked him about his inspirations, the series and his writing music. But the feeling of uncanny displacement is intact, not least because the show does a terrific job of bringing Stålenhag’s illustrations to life. The setting has changed from the rural Sweden of the book to Idaho, in the US Midwest. ![]() ![]() The show, starring Rebecca Hall and Jonathan Pryce and inspired by Stålenhag’s paintings, is about the residents of a town with a powerful, mysterious machine called The Loop. On 3 April, Amazon debuted the English-language series Tales From The Loop. This unique aesthetic-an unsettling mix of sci-fi and autobiographical intimacy-can be seen in the Swedish author’s three narrative art books: Tales From The Loop, Things From The Flood and The Electric State. ![]() Recent drone videos of cities with all the evidence of humankind but no humans aren’t far from his paintings, many of which have a barren landscape and a giant robot or machine of some kind, and a person, usually a child, in the foreground. The world has started resembling a Simon Stålenhag artwork. ![]()
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