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Patterns
This is the speech of an adult … this is the sound of a “mature” person. Some might say an old person with many children and grandchildren.
Apart from births, when you have children … especially the first one. Apart from life-threatening illness and accidents — I have experience with both — life unfolds in patterns, with many repetitions … patterns that repeat with no or only minor variations.
This applies to the rhythm of day and night, the seasons, everyday life, and holidays with their celebrations.
It applies to a child’s play, schooling and education, working life and family life, and finally old age.
I am now retired from paid employment, where circumstances had led me to work with IT, coding, and programming in order to support myself and contribute to supporting my family.
But I have been a visual artist throughout my entire adult life. Visual art has been a tool whenever I have felt the need to express myself in relation to the times I have lived in, and it has been both life-giving and full of frustrations. Visual art has been a life within life.
It has resulted in a great many materializations: drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, videos, texts, and exhibitions. But it has never become a success in the sense of providing a living. Nor has it ever become the artistic success I might have wished for … despite having travelled extensively throughout Europe, trying to live in Paris, and having lived in New York.
As a visual artist, you are only partly the master of your own success … unlike success as a human being. There, you are the one in charge. 🙂
The above is part of the current series.
With much of life lived.
A life of repetitions … with variations. Patterns.
August 2026
Jan Skovgård
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