For this project I wanted to make a gift for my girlfriend who will be spending the Christmas holiday in Sweden. I know relatively little about the country so it was fun to look into but I already had some ideas about what direction I wanted to take the project.
From the start I knew I wanted something small, quite tongue in cheek - something that would give her a little piece of my madness to carry with her while she was away. She is pretty aware of my ignorance of all parts of Swedish culture aside from my ridiculous view that Sweden is infested with bears.
Of course I know that this isn't really the case. But the idea of bears being a regular feature of everyday life delights me in a way. After all we killed all the native bears in England, sure they'd probably kill a lot of people but they're kind of cute too.
Maybe there's something in it, there have been plenty of famous bears. Something about a dangerous animal being made tame, friendly or ridiculous must capture people's imagination in some way.
Other contemporary artists use bears as a kind of fiction, they can be dangerous and yet beautiful. Janice Wright Cheney takes often disliked animals and shows them in redressed forms, the shape of the animal is recognisable but it's skin is changed. To me it both asks the viewer forget preconceptions and step closer but also makes a myth of the wild. Perhaps to city dwellers like me the wild is distant yet seems both fascinating and ridiculous.
I want to play on this distance by making a short book of illustrations offering at first logical and reasonable advice on how to avoid being eaten by bears. However as the book progresses it will slowly dissolve into farce. Playing on the lack of knowledge we have about what remains of the wild places but keeping it light, humourous and affectionate also.
