Independent story / H-20c / English working copy

The Buzzard and the Moon

The painting used in Glass on the Beach

Paul Bogatir · A first-person recollection

The title belongs to this story; the painting’s original title is not established.

Glass on the Beach ↗ · Happü video using this painting

Framed painting of a white and green buzzard against a red background, with a yellow moon, resting on a worn wooden chair. — A painting by Paul Bogatir, made with oil paint, toothpaste and iodine antiseptic on a wooden panel. Photographed in its frame; date of painting unknown.

The image in Glass on the Beach comes from a painting I made many years ago.

We have a stuffed common buzzard at home, and I used it as the subject. Max Ernst was an inspiration.

I painted it on a wooden panel using oil paint, toothpaste and iodine antiseptic.

When I was at art school, I went through a period of drawing quite a lot with iodine.

The toothpaste presented a particular problem. It needed to dry.

So I baked the painting in the oven.

The finished work has also been exhibited here in Delsbo.

I think of this painting a little like the titles I give Happü recordings. I want the words or the image to have a life of their own. They don't necessarily have to explain something else. I want them to become something in themselves.

I spent a lot of effort on the moon.

I have a theory that the boundary between two areas of colour is extremely important. In this case, I kept painting the red and the yellow, again and again.

Gradually, a line emerged around the moon.

But it wasn't a line I had painted directly. It was created by repeatedly working on the two areas of colour.

I don't think you can make quite the same thing by simply drawing a line.

There is something similar in Happü. Things happen in the space between what we do, and we can't entirely control them.

Why I used it

When I was making the video for Glass on the Beach, I felt overwhelmed by the endless supply of AI-generated images. So many pictures produced without any apparent effort or thought.

I've said before that what we need is an Andy Warhol of our time. Someone who could become both the destroyer and the saviour of all those AI images, making them worthless and valuable at the same time.

I use AI myself, but I didn't want another image that looked as though it had simply been generated.

So I decided to use one of my own paintings.

I knew where it came from. I remembered making it, working on that moon and trying to get the toothpaste to dry.

And I thought it was very unlikely that an AI would have produced anything quite like it.

At least I've never seen anything resembling it.