Gräshoppan 1931

Nils Dardel painted ‘Gräshoppan’ with oil on canvas, and it looks like he was working through a lot. The painting seems to shift and emerge through trial, error, and intuition, which I love. I really feel for Dardel. He might have been thinking about dreams, or maybe he felt like a grasshopper carrying a person on its back! The texture is smooth, with thin layers of paint and a restricted palette of mainly orange, yellow, green and blue. This adds to the emotional resonance of the work. That awkward leg of the character riding the grasshopper can communicate so much feeling; I wonder if he had another idea but kept it in? ‘Gräshoppan’ relates to Dardel's wider practice and body of work, as well as the work of other painters, like Chagall. Artists are in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting is a form of embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty.